seed testing

Seed Testing INTERNATIONAL

FEATuRE ARTICLE 4 Future growth drivers for the Indian seed industry

ASSOCIATION NEWS 10 Report from the ISTA Annual Meeting 2012, Venlo 16 Seminar “New developments and technologies in seed testing” 18 ISTA signs a Memorandum of Collaboration with the Royal

Botanic Gardens, Kew 19 The Articles of the International Seed Testing Association 24 Auditors’ Meeting 2012 29 30th ISTA Congress 2013, Antalya, Turkey 31 ISTA Congress 2013: Draft programme 33 General information on Turkey and Antalya 38 ISTA Seed Symposium 2013 41 How to become an ISTA Voting Delegate at the Ordinary

General Meeting 42 Time to get involved in ISTA Committees? 43 The Exhibition of Machines and Equipment for Seed Cleaning in

Graz, 1875

RuLES DEvELOpmENT 48 The 2007 ISTA Seed Health Committee Official Method Review 49 Seed Health Committee Official Method Review 2010 and 2011

ACCREDITATION 55 Information from the ISTA Accreditation System 58 Call for registration: 17th ISTA GMO Proficiency Test on soya

ISTA News Bulletin No. 144 October 2012

Hıdırlık Tower, Antalya, Turkey

Seed Testing International No. 144 October 2012II

Dear Reader, After a successful and highly interesting ISTA Annual Meeting

2012 in the Netherlands (please find a report on page 10) time is marching on, and already the registration for the 30th ISTA Con-gress 2013 in Antalya has opened. In this issue you will find all key information in regards to the programme, the meeting venue and the hosting country, aimed at keeping you completely informed about this outstanding, triennial event (page 29 and following).

Time is moving on and also ISTA has to adjust and find its way in the future. With reference to changes and the future: please take your time to read the report of the ISTA President (page 2) high-lighting recent developments and future tasks of ISTA; examine the newly adopted ISTA Constitution, now called the The Arti-cles of the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA)(page 19) and get an insight in “New developments and technologies in Seed Testing” from the report of the Seminar held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting (page 16).

As more and more members from all over the world are joining the Association, one particular region of current growth is Asia. We are pleased to present an article from this area in this issue, on the future growth drivers for the Indian seed industry (page 4).

Talking about the future, one should not forget to take a look back once in a while, as there is much we can learn from the past. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Steiner and his colleagues for providing us once more with an article about the history of seed testing, more specifically about the Exhibition of the Machines and Equipment for seed cleaning in Graz in 1875.

In closing I wish you a lot of fun in reading this issue of Seed Testing International and please do not forget to register for the upcoming 30th ISTA Congress to be held in Antalya, Turkey, truly a place with a very rich history indeed.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Muschick

International Seed Testing Association (ISTA)ISTA SecretariatZürichstrasse 50CH-8303 Bassersdorf, Switzerland

Phone: +41 44 838 60 00Fax: +41 44 838 60 01E-mail: [email protected]: www.seedtest.org

Seed Testing International No. 145Deadline for article submission: 15 February 2013Publication date: April 2013Circulation: 1500No. of copies printed: 2000Instructions to contributors: www.seedtest.org/STI

Other ISTA publicationsFor information on other ISTA publications,

please contact the ISTA Secretariat or visit our web site at www.seedtest.org.

Photo credits: Front cover: Michael Apel. P. 33: Ad Meskens. P. 34 (top): Alexandr Ostrovskiy. P. 34 (bottom): David Purserhouse. Pp. 35 (top), 37: Saffron Blaze. P. 35 (bottom): Ingo Mehling.

EDITORIAL

Seed Testing InternationalNo. 144 October 2012ISSN 1999-5229

Produced on behalf of theISTA Executive Committee

The views and opinions expressed by au-thors in this publication are not necessarily those of the International Seed Testing As-sociation (ISTA). No endorsement of any non-ISTA products or services mentioned in this publication is given or implied by the International Seed Testing Association.

Editor-in-chief Dr. Michael Muschick Co-editorsDr. Rasha El-KhademMrs. Patricia MuschickMr. Jonathan Taylor


No. 144 October 2012 Seed Testing International 1

CONTENTS

4Future growth drivers for the Indian seed industry2930th ISTA Congress 2013 Kervansaray Hotel Lara, Antalya, Turkey62Workshop reports

pRESIDENT’S REpORT 2 President’s Report

FEATuRE ARTICLE 4 Future growth drivers for the Indian seed industry

ASSOCIATION NEWS 10 Report from the ISTA Annual Meeting 2012, Venlo 16 Seminar “New developments and technologies in seed testing” 18 ISTA signs a Memorandum of Collaboration with the Royal

Botanic Gardens, Kew 19 The Articles of the International Seed Testing Association 24 Auditors’ Meeting 2012 25 Evaluation of participant survey 26 Changes to the International Rules for Seed Testing 2012 Edition 28 New face at the ISTA Secretariat 28 My European sojourn comes to a close 29 30th ISTA Congress 2013, Antalya, Turkey 30 Invitation by Mr. M. Mehdi Eker, Minister for Food, Agriculture

and Livestock of the Republic of Turkey 30 Invitation by Dr. Joël Léchappé, President of ISTA 31 ISTA Congress 2013: Draft programme 33 General information on Turkey and Antalya 38 ISTA Seed Symposium 2013 41 How to become an ISTA Voting Delegate at the Ordinary

General Meeting 42 Time to get involved in ISTA Committees? 43 The Exhibition of Machines and Equipment for Seed Cleaning in

Graz, 1875 46 Membership changes

RuLES DEvELOpmENT 48 The 2007 ISTA Seed Health Committee Official Method Review 49 Seed Health Committee Official Method Review 2010 and 2011

ACCREDITATION 55 Information from the ISTA Accreditation System 57 Laboratory accreditation changes 58 Call for registration: 17th ISTA GMO Proficiency Test on soya

TRAINING AND EDuCATION 59 ISTA Workshop announcements 62 ISTA Workshop reports

inside rear cover Calendar

294 62

Seed Testing International No. 144 October 20122

pRESIDENT'S REpORT

The ISTA Annual Meeting was held in Venlo, the Netherlands, from 11 to

14 June 2012. This meeting attracted 272 participants representing 46 countries. The Floriade exhibition centre provided an exceptional flowering environment propi-tious to a very successful meeting in a stu-dious and relaxed atmosphere.

On behalf of ISTA, I would like to thank the Dutch Designated Authorities for their support, and the National Organisation Committee, chaired by Joost van der Burg, Marien Valstar, Reini Verboom, Marcel Toonen and Harry Nijënstein.

Although it may be redundant for those who participated in the Annual Meeting, I wish to highlight several important themes for our Association, which were voted on or deeply discussed.

First of all, I have the pleasure to an-nounce that a new constitution, from now on called “The Articles of the Association” was voted on unanimously. It gives ISTA an official status of Association under Swiss law, with its official headquarters in Zurich. This new status strengthens the

Association and gives a legal status to fit with its mission. It is a major event, excep-tional in the life of an international asso-ciation such as ISTA.

With the signature of a Memorandum of Collaboration with the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, ISTA confirmed its willing-ness to support and collaborate with other scientific organizations for the develop-ment of research on seed quality. It will en-courage greater communication, exchange of information and collaboration between RBG Kew and its international partners with ISTA Member Laboratories.

This is the second memorandum for ISTA, after the Memorandum of Collabo-ration signed in 2006 with the FAO, on co-operation in capacity building, transfer of technology and exchange of information in all aspects of seed quality assurance.

These collaborations, the close partner-ship with other organizations such as the OECD, UPOV and the ISF, and the in-volvement of the Designated Authorities as voting members in ISTA, strengthen the technical contribution of ISTA to the in-terface between scientific research, regula-tions and the seed trade.

Audit process

During the Ordinary Meeting, the mem-bership decided by a consensus vote that “ECOM undertakes a rigorous review of the audit process to improve its cost-effective-ness, and consider the overall cost to labora-tories without reducing standards. Without in any way limiting the scope of the review, it should consider topics such as comparison with other systems, competitiveness, ensur-ing that the system is fit for purpose for Members and stakeholders”. This motion has been discussed between the Executive Committee and the representatives from Australia and New Zealand. All agreed to present together the above proposal.

It may be surprising to make a deep review of the accreditation system when

the number of accredited laboratories is regularly increasing. In response to a mo-tion passed at the 2010 Ordinary Meeting, requesting that “ECOM undertakes a rigor-ous review of the audit process to improve its cost-effectiveness...” the ECOM has put into place a financial tool to better under-stand the costs. This financial tool was presented and approved at the Ordinary Meeting.

Nevertheless, our review of the costs appears insufficient in regard to the cur-rent environment. Nowadays, ISTA is not the only accreditation body for seed test-ing laboratories. The number of bodies offering accreditation in seed testing has increased over the last 5–10 years. The proposed recognition and quality of the accreditation systems is varied. In some countries, it is recommended or compul-sory for laboratories to comply with two or more accreditations. The laboratories must then face double costs and effort to fit the requests from the regulations, the com-petition or the needs for the international trade. As examples of other accreditation systems in seed testing, the following can be listed: ISO 9001 (certification of pro-cess), ISO 17025 (accreditation of labo-ratories), AOSA/SCST (qualification of analysts), NAL (accreditation of laborato-ries), regulations for licensing laboratories (e.g. EU 2004/117), or new accreditations under implementation. Each of these ac-creditation bodies requests to use its own standard, test report and/or logo. As a result there can be as many kinds of tests reports as possible accreditations to report the quality of a seed lot. Some standards do not require that the method used or the sample size is reported, and the link to the seed lot is not guaranteed. This creates het-erogeneity and the risk of confusion and litigation.

One of the main goals of the review of the ISTA accreditation system is to consid-er topics such as a comparison with other systems and competitiveness, ensuring that

President’s ReportJoël Léchappé


pRESIDENT'S REpORT

the system is fit for purpose for Members and stakeholders. This is an ambitious pro-ject, which is very important to contribute to the guarantee of uniformity in seed test-ing. It involves the Executive Committee, the Secretariat and partners from Desig-nated Authorities and the seed industry. A progress report will be presented at the next ISTA Congress in 2013.

More flexibility

Over the past few years, ISTA has been regularly asked to introduce more flexibil-ity into the Rules. Recent examples are:– to allow the issuing of original Orange

International Seed Lot Certificates (OICs) for partial seed lots;

– approval for submission of large herbage seed lots;

– ending a germination test at a predeter-mined germination level;

– in-house germination methods? Flexibil-ity versus heterogeneity?

The first three items were voted on at the Ordinary Meeting in Venlo, June 2012.

The in-house methods were deeply dis-cussed on the basis of presentations pre-pared by the Rules Committee Chair, the Germination and Statistics Committees, and the Accreditation and Technical de-partment. The main goal of the in-house methods is to limit the number of methods into the Rules to reference methods. An-other advantage would be to allow labo-ratories to use their own method, with the equipment and consumables available at even low cost. However, one risk highlight-ed would be the creation of heterogeneity in the results, which is contradictory to the spirit of the Rules.

Failure to develop the current system could lead some laboratories to leave the ISTA accreditation and apply to other ac-creditation systems.

This debate is in this respect linked to the broader question of an ISTA accreditation to fit the needs of the members and stake-holders. The issue will be important for the future of ISTA. More work is necessary to come to a decision in the near future.

Seminar

The seminar, organized and chaired by Bert van Duijn, on “New developments and technologies in seed testing” opened an important debate on the biological and agronomical pertinence of new methods and new tools. The main questions, raised by Alison Powell and Craig McGill during their presentation, were: “How can ISTA respond to these developments? Does ISTA have a role in their validation? What are the needs and implementation barriers to intro-duce new methods into the Rules?”

The discussion started in June is a first step; more discussion will be organized to help develop an ISTA position.

The above items all converge towards flexibility, competitiveness or new tech-nologies. These are important items for the future of ISTA. The contribution of all members to the debates is essential.

ISTA Congress 2013

Our next meeting will be at the 30th ISTA Congress in Antalya, Turkey. The Congress will open with the Seed Sym-posium on “Evaluation of seed quality: a key step in exploiting the benefits of plant breeding and genetic conservation”.

One of our statutory obligations during the congress is the election of a Vice-Presi-dent and a new Executive Committee. The Technical Committees are also renewed. I invite all the current members to con-tinue to participate in ISTA. I also invite every body who wishes to be more involved to candidate as member of the Executive Committee or Technical Committees. You are welcome to read the very informative article from Steve Jones (on behalf of the Executive Committee) in this STI issue on page 42.

Workshops

The Technical Committees, together with hosting member countries, regularly organize workshops. These workshops of a very high technical and scientific level offer the exceptional possibility to share knowledge, improve the competencies or to train new analysts. Whether you are a member of ISTA or not, you are welcome to participate.

To conclude, I would like to mention some additional ongoing topics within the ECOM and the Secretariat, such as the fi-nalization of the financial tool, the feasibil-ity of electronic publication, studies for a new website, the elaboration of a policy on international relations and the preparation of the proposed strategy together with the chairs of the Technical Committees for ap-proval in Antalya, in June 2013.

Your ideas and proposals are welcome.�


FEATuRE ARTICLE

Before 1960, the seed industry in India was primarily an unorganized sec-

tor, and whatever seed was sold was non-branded. Farmers were using their own saved seed for planting, and most of the cultivars were non-hybrid. The business was primarily family owned. The only company which was selling flower and veg-etable seeds in its own brand in paper bags was Sutton, established in 1912.

In the late 1950s, on request by the Gov-ernment of India, the Rockefeller Founda-tion and the United States Department of Agriculture provided technical support for plant breeding research. Consequently, in 1961 the first 4 maize hybrids were released, which altered the Indian seed industry in India. In 1963, the National Seeds Cor-poration Ltd. (NSC) was established, pri-marily to produce the foundation seed of released hybrids of maize, pearl millet and sorghum. This can be said to be the begin-ning of the development of the organized seed industry in India.

Plant breeding research for improvement of varieties was conducted primarily by public sector organizations, i.e. agricultur-al universities and institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The germplasm was stored and preserved by these organizations and was freely avail-able on demand.

In 1988, a questionnaire was sent to 42 private seed companies to review the sta-tus of plant breeding research. Only 12 responded. According to the survey, no private company had been active in plant breeding before 1947. Between 1948 and 1970, only three companies began plant breeding research, while six began between 1971 and 1985 (P. K. Agrawal, 1988, Plant Breeding and Breeder Seed Production: A case Study, Division of Seed Science and Technology, IARI, New Delhi, pages 21).

However, the scene changed dramati-cally, and private sector companies are now active players in plant breeding research. These companies spend about 8–10 % of their turnover on research, and are concen-trating primarily on the development of hybrid varieties (it makes business sense), but in some cases also on open pollinated research varieties of paddy (i.e. unmilled rice in the husk), wheat and soybean. In contrast, the public sector NSC concen-trated on high-volume, low-value seeds of self-pollinated crops. The contribution of the private sector in the overall turnover of seed began to increase rapidly.

It was realized that quality seed is a vi-tal input for increasing food production. It was also realized that there is large poten-tial for the use of quality seed, and that the infrastructure for seed production, certifi-cation, quality assurance and marketing is very limited. So was the investment for the development of the seed sector. Therefore, the Government of India took some bold decisions.

First, breeder seed of publicly-bred vari-eties/hybrids was allotted to the private sec-tor for the production of foundation and commercial seed.

Second, a new seed policy was an-nounced in 1988, after a visit to Turkey by Prime Minister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. Under this new policy, the import of germplasm was allowed. Also, from July 1991 foreign investors were allowed to establish equity participation up to 51% in priority sectors, including the seed sector. This resulted in the entry of multinational corporations into the Indian seed business.

The Government of India requested a loan from the World Bank to strengthen the infrastructure for seed production. It resulted in establishing 33 breeder-seed production units, which provided adequate facilities to produce breeder seed for the production of foundation and certified la-belled seed. The private sector expanded rapidly. Seed corporations and seed cer-tification agencies of the Indian states were also established by this loan. All this

development, no doubt, changed the seed sector considerably. It was estimated in 1988 that the turnover of sorghum, pearl millet, maize and cotton seed was 1 bil-lion rupees (P. K. Agrawal, 1988, Seed Tech News, Vol. 18, No. 1) which in 2011 increased to about 50 billion rupees, a 50 times increase (1 US dollar = 45 rupees).

In 2002, the scenario changed with the introduction into India of Bt cotton. The increased usage of hybrid Bt cotton seeds throughout the country resulted in a pro-ductivity increase of 39 %, from 308 kg/ha (2001–2002) to 568 kg/ha (2009–2010, ISAAA, 2009, brief # 41). This established India as the second largest producer of cot-ton in the world.

More than 30 companies have licensing agreements with Mahyco Monsanto Bio-tech India Ltd. (MMB) to use the Bt gene. This brought about a change in the attitude of Indian farmers, who now view seed as an investment rather than a cost factor. The seed cost is low compared to the total cost of cultivation, and is estimated to be not more than 8 %. This change in attitude has opened up a host of opportunities for Indian seed companies which now aim to extend the success story of cotton to other crops by introducing researched and im-proved varieties of seeds.

The adoption in India of Bt cotton was very rapid, and the success story is unpar-allelled. As of 2010 there are 780 types of Bt cotton approved for cultivation (779 hy-brids and 1 variety). Six cotton events are involved (Table 1).

Of the events listed in Table 1, the most popular are MON 531 and MON 15985 (gene source: MMB). Most of the cotton hybrids on the market are modified using these two events.

It is estimated that 86 % of total cot-ton cultivated on 11 million hectares is Bt cotton (B. Choudhary & K. Gaur, 2010, ISAAA). It is believed that 36 million packets of 450 grams of Bt cotton seed was sold during the 2011 planting season.

The fact that Bt cotton has saturated almost 90 % of India’s cotton area also

Future growth drivers for the Indian seed industry

Dr. Pramod K Agrawal Managing Director, Prasha Agri-Consultants Pvt. Ltd.

Ashok Vihar Phase 1Delhi 110052, [email protected], [email protected]


FEATuRE ARTICLE


arouses serious concern regarding the scope of expansion of this technology in the country. However, an innovative ag-ronomic approach holds great promise in further yield enhancement. Multilocation trials conducted in three different states of India (Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka) for two years revealed that even at varied between-row and between-plant spacing, whereby the number of plants per acre was almost doubled, there was no significant reduction in productivity per plant. Rather, yield benefits of 200–400 kg per acre were recorded, owing to more plants per unit area. Hence, it is obvious that there is provision for increasing the crop seed rate from the recommended 450 grams per acre to as high as 700–800 grams per acre, with the benefit of a much higher yield. Hence, the key to ensure progressive returns from such advanced technologies lies in the development of innovative agro-nomic practices and using intelligently seed technological tools at the user end. Howev-er, there has been an increased incidence of attacks by sucking pests, due to the dense plant canopy. It is therefore suggested to design appropriate plant architecture with sympodial branches.

The Indian seed industry

The Indian seed industry is a vibrant industry, consisting of players from the public and private sectors. Public-sector companies sell mostly varieties of high-volume, low-value seeds, while private-sector companies deal in low-volume, high-value hybrid seeds. There are about 500 seed companies in India; some of them have very good facilities for research, and spend about 8–10 % of their turnover on research.

Seed industry turnover in 2011 is esti-mated to be 150 billion rupees (Table 2), of which 130 billion is for crop seeds and

20 billion for vegetable seeds (Figs. 1, 2), which is almost double what was previ-ously reported. There have been various re-ports that estimate the turnover of the In-dian seed industry at 65 to 80 billion rupees (P. S. Dravid: 65 billion; Monish Jain: 80 billion; Indian Seed Congress 2011, Souve-nir, Page 27, 113); it is highly undervalued. The International Federation of Seedsmen estimates Indian seed industry turnover to be 1.50 billion US dollars, and places it at 6th position worldwide (IFS, 2010). How-ever, with a turnover of 150 billion rupees, the Indian seed industry ranks at 3rd posi-tion worldwide after China.

Table 1. Events approved for use for commercial Bt cotton seed production. Source: ISAAA, 2009

Event/Gene Source Date of approval

MON 531(BG), cry1Ac gene) Mahyco/Monsanto 2002MON 15985 (BG II), cry1Ac & cry 2Ab genes) Mahyco/Monsanto 2006Event 1 (cry 1Ac gene) sourced from IIT, Kharagpur J K Agri-Genetics 2006GFM Event(cry1Ab & cry 1Ac genes) Nath Seeds (sourced from China) 2006BNLA-601 (cry 1Ac gene) CICR (ICAR) & UAS, Dharwad 2008MLS-9124 (synthetic cry 1Ac gene) Metahelix Life Sciences 2009

CICR = Central Institute for Cotton Research; ICAR = Indian Council of Agriculture Research; UAS = Univer-sity of Agricultural Sciences

Table 2. Turnover of Indian seed market (estimate of Dr Pramod Agrawal, 2011)

Crop Area, million ha

Area under improved seed, %

Area under improved seed, million ha

Seed rate, kg/ha

Total seed sold, million kg

Average salesRupees/kg Million rupees

Wheat 27.33 25 6.83 100 683 30 20 497Paddy 43.77 Hybrid 3/5 1.53 15 23 150 3 430 Research 30 13.13 30 394 50 19 700 Cer/Truth 30 13.131 30 394 22 8 668Maize hybrids 7.84 60 4.7 20 94 100 9 400Sorghum hybrids 8.31 90 7.5 10 75 100 7 500Pearl millet hybrids 9.33 100 9.33 5 47 100 4 700Castor hybrids 0.86 100 0.86 5 4.3 175 752Gram pulses 7.31 5 0.3655 75 27.4125 80 2 193Lentils 1.38 10 0.138 30 4.14 80 331Pigeon peas 3.55 10 0.355 10 3.55 80 284Mung beans 2.84 20 0.568 12 6.816 100 681Urd beans 2.67 20 0.534 12 6.408 100 640Groundnuts 6.29 3 0.1887 150 28.305 52 1 472Mustard 6.7 25 1.675 5 8.375 100 837Sunflower hybrids 2.08 80 1.664 5 8.32 150 1 248Soybeans 8.4 70 5.88 75 441 40 17 640Jute 0.91 30 0.273 10 2.73 70 191Cotton 9.09 36 million packets sold 800 per packet 28 800

Total crop seed 128 964Vegetable 20 000

Grand total 148 964


FEATuRE ARTICLE


The turnover of 150 billion rupees is achieved when only about 25 % of the re-quired seed is supplied by the organized sector. If it is increased to 40–50 %, we may be number one in the World by turnover. India has the potential to be number one, provided massive extension work is done and seed companies try to reach “unreach-able” areas of the country.

The turnover comes from hybrids and self-pollinated varieties including pulses. About one fifth comes from hybrid Bt cotton.

Verification of turnover

Turnover was verified with the turnover of the seed companies, the state seed cor-porations (SSC), the NSC and the State Farms Corporation (SFC).

There are about 500 seed companies in India, of which 243 are members of the National Seed Association of India (NSAI; SSC are excluded). There is a lack of accurate information on their turnover; however, it was estimated to be 108.3 bil-lion rupees.

There are 15 SSCs, one NSC and one SFC. Their combined turnover is 30.34 bil-lion rupees.

These amounts combined come to 138.64 billion rupees, which is close to the original estimate of 150 billion.

Growth drivers

Future growth drivers could be any crops if hybrids with a yield advantage are used. However, taking the interest of consumers and seed companies into consideration, I would view paddy as the most important, followed by maize. The following types of hybrids would add to the top and bot-tom lines of seed companies in the coming decade:– good paddy hybrids with a yield advan-

tage and not based on the 25A male ster-ile system;

– hybrids with a good seed yield (more than 1.5 tons/ha), so that the cost of seed production is reasonable.

– good paddy research varieties with excel-lent genetic purity and yield;

– good maize hybrids suitable for wider geographical areas;

– hybrids with a wider appeal;

Figure 1. Estimated turnover of Indian seed industry in 2011 by seed crop segment (million rupees)(Pramod Agrawal, 2011).

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Figure 2. Estimated turnover of Indian seed industry in 2011 by seed crop segment (percent)(Pramod Agrawal, 2011).

– hybrids resistant to biotic and abiotic stress;

– hybrids with trait integration to add value.

Cotton may also add to future seed indus-try growth, provided that:– the plant type is changed to accommo-

date higher plant population;– hybrids resistant to sucking pests are

available;

– the support price or commercial price is competitive for farmers to grow more cotton.

Government policies have always influ-enced farmers’ choices of crops for cultiva-tion. Therefore it should be conducive to grow cotton (a non-food crop).

Considering the above I would like to justify the statements by giving some facts and figures about paddy and maize.


FEATuRE ARTICLE


Paddy

Paddy is the most important staple food crop for more than half of the world’s population. In fact, paddy is an important part of the staple diet in the six most popu-lous countries — China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan & Nigeria — which together account for more than half of the annual global population growth (1.1 %) of 77 million people. It is believed that worldwide paddy production could catch up with the increasing demand by increas-ing usage of hybrid paddy seeds. Hybrid paddy yields about 15–20% more than the commercial varieties, and could hold the answer to food security, despite constraints such as decreasing land, water and labour availability.

China was the first to achieve success in hybrid rice when it released the three-line rice hybrid for commercial cultivation in 1976. In fact, this technology has enabled China to retain its position as the world leader in rice production, even with a sig-nificant reduction in the total rice-growing acreage in China since 1978. Now, it is reaping the benefits of the two-line hybrid rice technology, which has been success-fully commercialized since 1995.

India started concentrated efforts on hybrid rice development in 1989. Several hybrids from the public and private sec-tors are available for cultivation, with the private sector being the dominant player. In spite of the availability of several hy-brids, a very limited area is under hybrid cultivation, about 1.8 million hectares out of about 44.0 million hectares (4.1 %). One major reason for this low adoption is the unattractive yield advantage that this tech-nology offers. It is a mere 1.0–1.5 t/ha over varieties. Hence, currently the cultivation is restricted to a few areas of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Punjab and Haryana. There is a general lack of acceptance in southern parts of the country, due to a lack of sufficient yield advantage, and to region-specific require-ments for grain quality: the grains of our current rice hybrids are sticky in nature (with consumer preference being for free-flowing rice grains), and the rice has an aroma which is not preferred in many parts of the country.

Table 3. Paddy acreage in selected states (Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India)

State Area (million ha) Area (%)Uttar Pradesh 5.92 13.51West Bengal 5.69 12.99Orissa 4.45 10.16Andhra Pradesh 3.98 9.08Chhattisgarh 3.72 8.49Bihar 3.36 7.67Punjab 2.62 5.98Assam 2.19 5.00Tamil Nadu 1.93 4.41Madhya Pradesh 1.66 3.79Jharkhand 1.62 3.70Maharashtra 1.53 3.49Karnataka 1.40 3.20Haryana 1.04 2.37Gujarat 0.73 1.67Kerala 0.26 0.59Others 1.71 3.90All India 43.81 100.00

Table 4. Paddy seed requirements (total area under cultivation: 44 million ha). Note: It is assumed that about 50% area of paddy will be in research variety and 10% area will be in hybrid by 2016

Paddy type Area under branded seed, %

Seed requirement for 50 % of area, million ha

Seed rate, kg/ha

Total seed requirement, tonnes

Research variety 50 22 30 660 000Hybrid 10 4.4 15 66 000

Table 5. Expected value of the paddy seed market by 2016. Note: turnover will surpass Bt cotton

Paddy type Expected requirement, tonnes

Selling rate, rupees/tonne

Value of the market, billion rupees

Research paddy 660 000 50 000 33.0Paddy hybrid 66 000 150 000 9.9

Total 42.9

It is expected that better hybrids will be developed to give a yield advantage over the research varieties of at least 3–4 t/ha, with an enhanced ability to fight drought and diseases. Most of our hybrid rice is developed by using CMS or the 3-line sys-tem. CMS is 25A, which provides sticki-ness. There is hence a need to find a good alternative to 25A. If this is achieved, the area under hybrid rice may reach 10–20 % of the total area under rice in India in the next five years.

In the past five decades, the paddy acre-age has grown from 30.0 million ha in 1950 to about 44.0 million ha in 2000, and has remained there since the past five years. The acreages of some of the states are giv-en in Table 3.

India is a major player in the global paddy market. With about 44.0 million ha under paddy cultivation (highest in the world), India is the 2nd largest producer after China. Interestingly, China has 33 % less acreage but enjoys a 35 % higher pro-duction compared to India, because of the introduction of hybrid varieties in a large area. The productivity for paddy in India has been stagnant at 3.3 t/ha, less than half that of China. Therefore, there is a need to conduct research on:– developing better plant types;– CMS line development;– seed production technology to obtain

higher seed yields;– resistance to disease;– agronomic research to enhance paddy

production.

Paddy seed turnover is calculated to be 21.8 billion rupees in 2011. It could be increased to 42 billion over the next four years (Ta-ble 4), if 50 % of the cultivated acreage is covered by research varieties and 10 % by hybrid varieties. The seed requirement is given in Table 4.

The market for paddy seed is therefore huge. The turnover of paddy is given in Table 5.

In order to achieve a turnover of 42 billion rupees from paddy seed, attention should be given to those areas where there is less penetration of quality paddy seed, or there is a big scope for selling paddy seed (Table 2).


FEATuRE ARTICLE


Maize

Maize (corn) is the most cultivated grain in the world, with the USA and China ac-counting for more than 60 % of global production. Over the past several years, world supply has been unable to meet de-mand, and this has been compounded by the ever-increasing alternative uses of corn for production of motor fuel, particularly in the USA.

Global corn production has almost dou-bled over the past two decades from 400 million tonnes (1990) to 817 million tonnes (FAOSTAT, 2009), and average yields have gone up from 1.95 t/ha (1960) to 5.12 t/ha. (FAOSTAT, 2009). This increase in pro-ductivity has been largely due to the intro-duction of single-cross hybrids.

Globally, India has the 4th largest acre-age and is the 5th largest corn producer. Its yield is low, almost half that of Argentina or China. The corn yield of the USA is highest in the world, and about five times that of India (Table 6). Therefore, maize offers a great opportunity to further en-hance yields through hybrid varieties, par-ticularly with single-cross hybrids. Corn is grown in many states in India.

In 2010–11, corn was planted over 8.1 million hectares (Reuters) with a produc-tion of 16 million tonnes ( Bloomberg).

The concept of hybrid vigour was first commercially exploited in corn in the USA. The first commercial hybrid seed corn was sold in 1924 by Henry Wallace. Seed companies did massive extension work in convincing farmers in the USA to plant hybrids for better yield. It was not easy. The substantially higher yield and mech-anization-friendly plant characteristics led to extensive adoption of these cultivars in the USA. The introduction of still higher yielding and more uniform single-cross maize hybrids, compared to the initially developed double-cross hybrids, led to the successful establishment of hybrid technol-ogy in agriculture, which was soon adopted in almost all other crops.

Almost 40 years later, the first hybrid maize seed was produced in 1961 and sold in India. Growing conditions for maize are very different in India to the USA. The area and production of maize in India is given in Table 7. In this table, the States have been arranged in order of yield per hectare. With almost 8 million hectares under maize cultivation there is a great op-portunity to enhance its production by in-novative technology, including agronomic and seed technology tools.

In India, corn is used as for the follow-ing purposes (Sai Kumar, Chikkappa and

Manivannam, 2010, NSAI Magazine Oct. Dec, 2010):– poultry feed (bulk users, about 49 % of

production);– human Consumption (25 %);– animal feed (12 %);– starch industry (white corn; 12 %);– brewing (1 %);– seed (1 %).

One question which is frequently asked is whether Indian companies will be able to compete with the multinational seed com-panies operating in India with respect to maize research, seed production and sales. My thinking is that Indian and multina-tional seed companies may co-exist in this vast market. Selling price of maize seed varies from 50 to 250 rupees per kilogram (Table 8).

Of course, the multinational corpora-tions have a wide collection of germ plasm and a very massive research network. This gives them an edge, but they are operating in the premium price segment, whereas the low-, medium- and high-price segments are still available for Indian companies, for which there is a vast acreage available. It is hoped that demand for corn seed is ex-pected to be more than 30 million tonnes by 2015 (Rath and Joshi, NSAI Magazine Oct.–Dec. 2010, p. 24–25).

Table 7. Area, production and yield of maize in selected states of India (2008–09) (Source: Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation}

State Area, mil-lion ha

Proportion of total area, %

Production, million tonnes

Proportion of total production, %

Yield, kg/ha

Andhra Pradesh 0.85 10.42 4.15 21.04 4873Tamil Nadu 0.29 3.51 1.26 6.37 4389West Bengal 0.09 1.11 0.34 1.74 3782Punjab 0.15 1.85 0.51 2.60 3404Karnataka 1.07 13.08 3.03 15.35 2833Bihar 0.64 7.84 1.71 8.69 2676Himachal Pradesh 0.30 3.64 0.68 3.43 2273Jammu & Kashmir 0.32 3.86 0.63 3.21 2005Rajasthan 1.05 12.88 1.83 9.27 1736Uttar Pradesh 0.80 9.78 1.20 6.07 1499Gujarat 0.50 6.10 0.74 3.75 1481Jharkhand 0.22 2.64 0.30 1.54 1407Madhya Pradesh 0.84 10.29 1.14 5.80 1361Others 0.41 4.98 0.64 3.23 1560All India 8.17 100.00 19.73 100.00 2414

Table 8. Approximate selling prices of maize in India

Price segment Price, rupees/kgLow price: composite, varie-ties etc.

40–70

Medium price: hybrids, double cross, 3-way cross etc.

80–100

High price, double cross, 3-way cross and single cross

100–150

Premium price: single cross 150–250

Table 6. Maize area and production of few selected countries (FAOSTAT, 2009)

Country Maize area, ha

Produc-tion, million tonnes

Yield, t/ha

World 159 531 007 817 110 509 5.12USA 32 209 277 333 010 910 10.34Argentina 2 337 175 13 121 380 5.61China 30 478 998 163 118 097 5.35Brazil 13 791 219 51 232 447 3.71Mexico 7 200 000 20 202 600 2.81India 8 400 000 17 300 000 2.06


FEATuRE ARTICLE


Incorporating tolerance against the main biotic and abiotic stresses, particularly drought, either by conventional breeding or biotechnological tools, offers particu-larly promise.

In future, global warming is likely to ag-gravate the environmental stress for wheat and rice (Ortiz et al, 2008, Climate change: can wheat beat the heat? Agriculture, Eco-system and Environment, 126 (1 / 2), 46–58). In this scenario, maize, a C4 plant (see box at right), may have an increased role in the future agricultural landscape.

Executive summary

There are about 500 seed companies in India belonging to the public and private sectors. The combined turnover of seed in-dustry is estimated to be 150 billion rupees in 2011 (3.333 billion US dollars; 1 dol-lar = 45 rupees). Of this, 130 billion rupees (USD 2.889 billion) comes from crop seed and 20 billion rupees (USD 444 million) from vegetable seeds. This places India at 3rd position in the world after China, whereas the International Federation of Seedsmen (2010) has put India at 6th po-sition (USD 1.5 billion = 67.5 billion ru-pees). Various Indian authors have also es-timated the Indian seed industry turn over to be 60 to 80 billion rupees. According

C4 plants

C4 plants utilize the C4 carbon fixation pathway, in which the CO2 is first bound to a phospho-enolpyruvate in the mesophyll cell, resulting in the formation of a 4-carbon compound, ox-aloacetate, that is shuttled to the bundle sheath cell where it is be decarboxylated to liberate the CO2 to be utilized in the C3 pathway. A C4 plant is better adapted than a C3 plant in an environment with high daytime temperatures, intense sunlight, drought, or limitation of nitro-gen or CO2. Most C4 plants have a special leaf anatomy, Kranz anatomy, in which the vascular bundles are surrounded by bundle sheath cells. Upon the fixation of CO2 into a 4-carbon com-pound in the mesophyll cells, this compound is transported to the bundle sheath cells in which it is decarboxylated, and the CO2 is re-fixed via the C3 pathway. The enzyme involved in this process is PEP carboxylase. In this mecha-nism, the tendency of rubisco (the first enzyme in the Calvin cycle) to photorespire, or waste energy by using oxygen to break down carbon compounds to CO2, is minimized. Examples of C4 plants include maize, sorghum, sugarcane, sunflower and broccoli.

to the present estimate, we are at 3rd po-sition in the world when only 25 % of the required seed is sold through the organized sector. If it is increased to 40–50 % we may be number one in the world. And we have the capability to be number one. The seed industry took a big leap forward after the commercialization of Bt cotton in 2002. Having seen the success of the Bt gene, many companies are looking to incorpo-rating useful traits in their products for commercialization, but so far success has eluded them. It is hoped that the Round-up Ready flex gene may be commercial-ized in 2013. Technology for added value in products has become a central point for product development. However, the devel-opment of technology and its integration in products are expensive, a cost that small companies cannot afford. Paddy and maize are expected to drive the growth of the In-dian seed industry further. In India, paddy is grown on 44 million hectares. In 2011, turnover from paddy was calculated to be about 20 billion rupees (USD 444 million), and it may reach about 40 billion rupees (USD 888 million) by 2016. Similarly, maize turnover is currently about 7 billion rupees (USD 156 million) which could be doubled in the next 4 years. The area under maize, a C4 crop (see box), may increase to mitigate the impact of climate change.

International Rules for Seed Testing Edition 2013ISBN 978-3-906549-72-9 (English)ISBN 978-3-906549-73-6 (Annexe to Chapter 7, English)ISBN 978-3-906549-74-3 (French, incl. Annexe to Chapter 7)ISBN 978-3-906549-75-0 (German, incl. Annexe to Chapter 7)

The Edition 2013 (effective 1 January 2013) includes the latest changes passed at the ISTA Ordinary Meeting 2012, held at Venlo, the Netherlands. Updates, in the form of additions or replacements of existing pages, are published as Amendments and can be inserted separately into the binder.Amendments Part A: effective 1 January 2013Amendments Part B (changes regarding large herbage seed lots): dispatch April 2013, effective 1 July 2013

Prices (incl. Annexe to Chapter 7):Complete Edition 2013: CHF 421.00 (approx. USD 450.00/EUR 348.00)Amendments: CHF 115.00 (approx. USD 123.00/EUR 95.00)

All purchasers will receive Amendments Part B free of charge in April 2013.Available from the ISTA Secretariat (for contact details, see back cover)

INTERNATIONAL SEED TESTING ASSOCIATION (ISTA)

Edition 2013

InternationalRules forSeed Testing


ASSOCIATION NEWS

Report from the ISTA Annual Meeting 2012

Martina Haefeli and Patricia Muschick ISTA Administration Department

The International Seed Testing Associa-tion (ISTA) was delighted to hold its

Annual Meeting in collaboration with the National ISTA Designated Authority of the Netherlands from 11 to 14 June 2012. The conference venue chosen for this oc-casion was the Floriade 2012, a unique world horticultural expo situated in Venlo, a small city in the province of Limburg, close to the German border. The Floriade is staged only once every 10 years. It is very popular (2012: 2 million visitors), as it showcases the world’s best flowers, plants, trees, fruits and vegetables.

This year, the Annual Meeting was pre-ceded by a Variety workshop and a Flower Seed Testing workshop. Both workshops were organized together with the Dutch colleagues from Naktuinbouw and were held from 6 to 8 June in Roelofarendsveen, the Netherlands. More information on these workshops is available on page 63.

The participation at this meeting was the highest ever reached at an ISTA Annual Meeting. We are very proud to report that the meeting was attended by a record num-ber of 272 participants from state and pub-lic sector. In fact, there were participants from universities, companies, seed industry and governments, representing in total 51 countries. However, the majority of partic-ipants were from seed companies and the remainder from research institutes.

Following the opening of registration, the meeting started with the Welcome Re-ception, held on Sunday evening, the 10th of June. The Welcome Reception took place at the reclusive Beach Club at the premises of the Floriade. The beautiful weather enabled everyone who came to the Welcome Reception to spend an amusing evening in sunshine outside the Beach Club and to enjoy the food and drinks offered by the courteous waiters.

Head of the National Organizing Committee, Joost van der Burg.

Attilio Lovato with Nico Koomen, President of the Dutch Horticultural Council (Nederlandse Tuinbouwraad), the organizers of the Floriade.

ISTA Secretariat8303 [email protected]


ISTA Annual Meeting 2012

The following day, on June 11, the ISTA President opened the meeting by welcom-ing everyone present for the ISTA meeting. After the opening of the meeting, the ISTA Seminar organized by the ISTA Advanced Technology Committee was held. The top-ic of this year’s ISTA Seminar was about the future of technologies from the past, in fact, how we use these technologies and what happens to future technologies of to-day. The Seminar was led by the Technical Committee Chair Bert van Duijn and was attended by 248 people (see separate report on page 16).

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the techni-cal committees presented their work. The schedule was filled by sessions on current issues such as Rules Proposals which were later to be discussed and voted on in the Ordinary Meeting. On both days, each committee was given the opportunity for side meetings either at the meeting venue or at one of the hotels. As usual, some of the meetings were held privately, others were open for public participation.

On Wednesday evening, the Official Din-ner took place in the beautiful greenhouse Villa Flora at the Floriade. The marvellous location and the exotic music allowed eve-ryone to spend an enjoyable and unforget-table evening with food and wine. Some of the participants even chose to dance on stage and since the dinner tables were round, it was easier for everyone to chat with people sitting on the same table.

On the last day of the meeting, the Ordi-nary Meeting was opened by a welcome of the ISTA President. The Ordinary Meeting



was attended by around 150 participants. The ISTA President expressed his appre-ciation for the invitation from the national Designated Authority and later remarked on the importance of the Netherlands as a seed-production country.

After the President’s address, the Roll Call of the Designated Members entitled to vote revealed that 35 voting delegates were present at the meeting. To reach a quorum, 29 voting delegates were required, therefore the meeting was declared quorate.

Before proceeding to the voting items of the day, the programme continued with the reports from the Executive Committee which consisted of several items presented: the annual report of the Executive Com-mittee, a presentation on the legal status of the Association and a presentation on an internal finance tool. The annual report from the Secretary General followed as a separate agenda point.

Then a short introduction was given to explain why the vote on a modified Con-stitution was put for vote under agenda point 7., which is to ensure that ISTA is recognized as an association under the Swiss Civil Code 60 ff. A vote on the Con-stitution Changes 2012 was then proceeded with, and ‘The Articles of the Internation-al Seed Testing Association’ as they were to be called after a successful vote by the ISTA voting delegates then came into force as accepted by the voting delegates and officially signed by the ISTA Officers (see page 19).

The next item on the agenda was the fix-ation of annual fees. The proposal put for-ward by the Executive Committee was to

Bert van Duijn, Chair of the ISTA Seminar.



raise the fees by 1% to help offset increased salary costs due to inflation or changes in responsibilities. After a lively debate, the majority of the voting delegates voted in favour of the proposed increase to come into force on January 1, 2013.

Thereafter, the proposed changes to the International Rules for Seed Testing 2013 were up for debate and voted on by the 35 voting delegates item by item. One of the main rules proposals up for vote were the proposed modifications to chapter 2.5.4.2 Large herbage seed lots, but there were also many other rules proposals: additions of new species; a proposal to allow the issu-ing of original Orange International Seed Lot Certificates for partial seed lots; tak-ing the container-sample for heterogeneity testing; several PSD modifications; amend-ments to the description of seedling abnor-malities; ending germination tests at a pre-determined germination level; a new seed health method on Detection of infectious tobamoviruses on Lycopersicon esculentum (Tomato) by the local lesion assay (index-ing) on Nicotiana tabacum plants; addition of a PCR testing option to an existing seed

health method; proposals for sample sizes for seed health tests; amendment to the seed health method for Detection of Pea Early Browning Virus and Pea Seed-borne Mosaic Virus on Pisum sativum; removals of the low-temperature method for those species where it has not been individually validated from the Moisture Table; and also a clarification of purity testing for weighed replicates test.

The consideration and adoption of the reports of the Technical Committees was done by applause not at least to acknowl-edge all their work and support for the Association.

The venue of the Congress 2013 which in fact will be held in the beautiful city of Antalya in Turkey, from 12th to 18th of June 2013 (more information is available on www.seedtest.org/Congress2013) was then presented under the agenda point ‘An-nouncement of place and date of the next Ordinary Meeting’, followed by a presen-tation on the Seed Symposium 2013 which is part of the Congress. Then everyone was invited to stunning Edinburgh for the ISTA Annual Meeting 2014.

After the closing address of the ISTA President, the organizers in the Nether-lands were given a certificate of apprecia-tion, expressing gratitude for all their work on behalf of the Association in organizing the meeting. The President also thanked everyone for the very intensive and pro-ductive meeting and invited everyone to the next Ordinary Meeting to be held in Turkey.

The high participation to this year’s ISTA Annual Meeting was highly appreci-ated and special thanks goes all speakers, exhibitors, and active participants for the successful meeting. Thanks are also due to the staff for their tremendous amount of work and efforts in the preparation and organisation of the meeting. The ISTA Annual Meeting 2012 was an unforgetta-ble experience and very fruitful in terms of lively discussions and decisions made. All the hard work ultimately contributed to the success of this year’s meeting.

Further information about the Annual Meeting 2012, including minutes and pres-entations, is available on the ISTA web site at www.seedtest.org/AM12.�

The ISTA Secretariat information stand.



The Executive Committee.

The National Organizing Committee: Harry Nijënstein, Marcel Toonen, Reini Verboom and Joost van der Burg (not present: Marien Valstar).

Discussion and panel session.



ISTA Seminar “New developments and technologies in seed testing”

Bert van Duijn Chair, ISTA Advanced Technologies Committee

The ISTA Seminar entitled “New De-velopments and Technologies in Seed

Testing” was, apart from the Welcome Re-ception the day before, the starting event of the 2012 Annual Meeting. Being a Com-mittee with the aim to provide information on new technologies to the other ISTA Technical Committees, the Advanced Technologies Committee (ATC), as main organizer, involved all the ATC contact persons of the other TCOMs in the organi-zation of the seminar programme. This in-cluded requesting and providing feedback, suggestions and support. This resulted in a multifaceted programme with 13 lectures.

The lectures involved speakers from eight different countries (USA, UK, France, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Italy and the Netherlands), affiliated to universi-ties, institutes and companies. Expecting a very high diversity in areas of interest, and in addition a scientific and practical level among the attendants, a main challenge for the organizers was to include enough topic diversity and scientific and practical level differentiation in the seminar; especially in order to satisfy the majority of this very special audience. Based on the feedback survey on the seminar, which showed over 75% of the attendants rating the seminar between good and excellent, the organizers can be satisfied with the result.

There were 248 seminar participants from 51 different countries, representing scientists and seed laboratory specialists from the private, state and public sectors, laboratories, institutes, and universities. After the opening of the seminar by ISTA President Joël Léchappé, the Chair of the Seminar and the ATC, Bert van Duijn, introduced the major session topics. The three sessions ranged from vision and

image analysis, via sensors, to molecular technologies. Each topic was illustrated shortly by looking into possible technolo-gies that may become sooner or later part of seed testing assays.

Vision and image analysis

In the vision and image analysis session various aspects of the application of vi-sion and image analysis technologies and approaches in seed testing were covered. These technologies differ e.g. in the wave-length (type of light, radiation) used to capture the image and the test application.

On this topic, Birte Boelt from Aarhus University (Denmark) clearly explained the principle of multispectral cameras and imaging, and its power to identify seed quality differences at the level of individual seeds. Such systems can be used for quality testing of seed batches as well as in seed sorting. Similarly, working at a different wavelength and showing internal struc-tures, X-ray images can also be used.

Henry Bruggink from Incotec (NL) has worked for over 15 years on the develop-ment of X-ray seed evaluation and sorting systems. He explained the restrictions of X-ray imaging in seed testing (connected with radiation physics and seed physiol-ogy) as well as the ins and outs of the im-age analysis software that is essential in the application of X-ray images in seed evalua-tion. Both multispectral imaging and X-ray imaging are technologies that currently are available and used in seed testing and sort-ing. Nonetheless, this is not (yet) the case with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a technology that is applied to almost every standard used in hospitals nowadays.

Fabio Gorian from the Forestry Re-search and Conservation Institute (Italy) showed impressive MRI images of tree seeds, and illustrated how these images un-covered defects in seeds. Future develop-ments may lead to the availability of MRI as a standard technique in seed testing.

Stephen Harper from GTG/Germains (UK) and Étienne Belin from SNES/GEVES (France) presented examples of the current use of visual light seed imaging in a practical application involving imag-ing of the germinating seed. In the analysis of primed seeds, GTG uses a fully auto-mated system based on the imaging of the seedlings.

Etienne Belin informed on the software issues involved in seed image analysis and the challenges in monitoring seedling elon-gation in seed testing.

The final lecture in the session, by John Bijl and Cees Visser from ViVi (Nether-lands), illustrated emerging possibilities for the use of image analysis in systems. In fact, image analysis in systems allows the sale to growers of sorted seedlings in pro-tected containers, as an alternative to seeds. This possibility supports the ISTA notion that seedling quality and testing is increas-ingly important.

(New) Sensor applications in seed testing and developments in seed technology

The morning continued with a session on sensor applications in seed testing, in-cluding new developments in seed technol-ogy. Parameters discussed in seed testing were oxygen, ethanol, and water activity.

In a range of experiments and data analysis, Kent Bradford, from the Univer-sity of California Davis (USA), showed approaches to the measurement of seed oxygen consumption during germination. Such approaches can be used as a valuable tool in the determination of seed quality aspects, at both the single-seed and seed batch levels.

This lecture was complemented by Ste-ven Groot from Wageningen University and Research Centre (Netherlands), who spoke about the use of ethanol determina-tions in the headspace of seed containers to determine seed viability. Both (single-seed)

Fytagoras / Leiden UniversitySylvius Laboratory2333 BE Leiden, [email protected]



oxygen consumption and ethanol measure-ments promise to become standard tools in seed research and seed testing laboratories.

Craig McGill from Massey University (New Zealand), and representing the ISTA Moisture Committee, explained very clear-ly in an impressive appearance the differ-ence between moisture content and water activity and their measurements in seed testing. The advantages of water activity measurements were clearly illustrated and are subject of studies and evaluation of the Moisture Committee.

The session was completed by Frans Tetteroo from Incotec (Netherlands), who showed all the possibilities and functionali-ties available today in seed coating and seed pelleting technology. In his presentation, he also included an outlook into the future.

Molecular technologies in seed testing

In the final session, molecular tech-nologies in seed testing were discussed. Both Steven Penfield from Exeter Univer-sity (UK) and Patrik Stolt from ScanBi

Diagnostics (Sweden) gave excellent over-views of different levels of detail, possibili-ties, technical challenges, and applications of molecular technologies as means of un-derstanding seed quality aspects as well as seed testing assays.

Finally, Benjamin Kaufman from Pio-neer HiBred (USA), representing the GMO committee, talked about DNA markers in purity testing. He explained to the audience the challenges and opportuni-ties that the GMO Committee is facing in terms of the application of DNA marker technology to seed testing, and specially seed purity testing.

New technologies and ISTA Rules, needs and implementation barriers

A final session was dedicated to the per-spective of all these new developments and technologies in relationship to the ISTA International Rules for Seed Testing.

Alison Powell from Aberdeen University (UK) wrapped up the day by explaining the most important issues to be considered on

the route to implementation of new views, technologies, and scientific advances in the ISTA seed testing rules.

All presentations of the Seminar are available on the ISTA web site (www.seedtest.org/Final_Programme). They pro-vide a valuable source of information for those who attended the seminar, but also for those who could not be present. The Seminar showed that new technologies and developments in seed testing emerge quickly, and should be monitored closely and continually by the seed testing commu-nity for applicability and robustness. The organizers thank the ATC members and ATC contact persons from the other Com-mittees very much for their valuable input, suggestions, and critical questions, as well as the members of the ISTA Secretariat for coordination, logistics, and preparations. Last but not least, our committee is grate-ful that so many excellent speakers agreed to deliver a presentation and thus ensured a successful, really interesting, and enjoy-able Seminar.�

The speakers at the Seminar: (from left to right) Bert van Duijn (Seminar Chair), Steven Penfield, Frans Tetteroo, Kent Bradford, Cees Visser, John Bijl, Patrik Stolt, Birte Boelt, Steven Groot, Henry Bruggink, Stephen Harper, Étienne Belin, Beni Kaufman



At the ISTA Annual Meeting in Venlo in June 2012, the ISTA President, Joël

Léchappé added his signature to a memo-randum of Collaboration (MoC) with the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew, UK. The MoC had previously been signed in London by Tim Entwhistle, Kew’s Direc-tor of Conservation, Living Collections and Estates. The MoC represents the out-come of work within the ECOM Working Group on Seed Science, which is made up of Alison Powell (Chair), Joël Léchappé, Françoise Corbineau (Université Pierre et Marie Curie, France), Alan Taylor (Cor-nell University (USA) and Robin Probert (RBG, Kew, UK). This working group was set up in 2007 and included within its objectives to increase collaboration with other organisations and to maintain and increase ISTA’s involvement in science. Discussion within the working group led us to believe that collaboration with RBG, Kew (most specifically with the Conserva-tion Department and the Millennium Seed Bank) would help us to achieve both these objectives. Close collaboration with Robin Probert (Head of Conservation and Tech-nology, Seed Conservation Department, RBG, Kew), has helped us to achieve this collaboration, and we are particularly grateful to him for his support.

ISTA and RBG, Kew have much in com-mon. Both are non-profit-making organi-sations committed to the maintenance and improvement of seed quality for agricul-ture, forestry and land restoration, as well as the introduction of species. The focus of RBG, Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank Part-nership (MSBP) and its global network of laboratories is the long-term conservation and use of seeds of wild plants, crop rela-tives and wild species. Within this frame-work, evaluation and maintenance of seed quality is essential. ISTA members are

committed to developing and establishing standard methods for sampling seeds and testing seed quality, accrediting seed test-ing laboratories and promoting research in all aspects of seed science and technology.

Close relationships between the two or-ganisations have existed for a number of years. Conservationists from Kew’s Mil-lennium Seed Bank have contributed to ISTA’s Technical Committees, for example Hugh Pritchard (Head of Research, Seed Conservation Department) as Chair of the Storage Committee and as a member of the Forest Tree and Shrub Committee, and Moctar Sacandé (International Pro-gramme Co-ordinator for Africa, Seed Conservation Department) as a member of the Storage Committee and as one of the Associate Editors of Seed Science and

Technology. A former member of staff at Kew, Fiona Hay, is now Chief Editor of Seed Science and Technology. In addition, representatives of Kew have given presen-tations at ISTA seed symposia, and ISTA members have contributed to, or are cur-rently involved in, research programmes across Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank Partnership.

The signing of this Memorandum of Collaboration will encourage greater com-munication, exchange of information and collaboration between ISTA Member Laboratories and RBG, Kew and its inter-national partners. There will be particular interest in wild plant species not currently in the ISTA Rules, including crop relatives and forestry species which will contribute to the maintenance of food security and plant diversity in the future. �

ISTA signs a Memorandum of Collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Alison Powell Chair, ECOM Working Group on Seed Science

School of Biological SciencesUniversity of AberdeenAberdeen, AB24 3UU, [email protected]

ISTA President Joël Léchappé signing the Memorandum of Collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.



A new legal basis for the International Seed Testing Association

Jonathan Taylor ISTA Publications Unit

At this year’s Ordinary Meeting, an im-portant agenda point was the vote on

changes to the ISTA Constitution, in order to establish ISTA as an association under Swiss law (see Seed Testing International 143, April 2012).

The vote was preceded by a presentation by ECOM member Alison Powell (UK)on the legal status of the Association, out-lining the many reasons for the various changes, such as allowing the Association to comply more easily with Swiss tax law, defining liabilities etc.

Another change was the name of the Constitution, which would in future be known as the “Articles of the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA)”.

The vote itself, under Agenda point 7, was introduced by ECOM member Craig McGill (New Zealand), Chair of the ECOM Working Group on Constitution and Bylaws.

The motion to accept the new Articles was passed unanimously by the Voting Delegates.

The new Articles were then signed by ISTA President Joël Léchappé (France) and Officer Francisco Krzyzanowski (Bra-zil), and so immediately came into force as of 14 June 2012. This is an important mile-stone in ISTA’s history.

The new Articles are presented on the following pages, with changes marked in blue. The Articles can also be download-ed from the ISTA web site, under “About ISTA”.

The Articles of The International Seed Testing Association (ISTA)

I. Name and Seat

Article 1 Name

The Association shall be known accord-ing to the Swiss Civil Code articles 60 ff. as The International Seed Testing As-sociation, hereinafter referred to as “the Association”.

Article 2 Seat

The seat of the Association shall be at the office of the Secretary General in Switzerland.

II. Objects

Article 3 Primary Purpose and Secondary Purposes

(a) The primary purpose of the Associa-tion is to develop, adopt and publish stand-ard procedures for sampling and testing seeds, and to promote uniform application of these procedures for evaluation of seeds moving in international trade.

(b) The secondary purposes of the Asso-ciation are actively to promote research in all areas of seed science and technology, including sampling, testing, storing, pro-cessing, and distributing seeds, to encour-age variety (cultivar) certification, to par-ticipate in conferences and training courses aimed at furthering these objectives, and to establish and maintain liaison with other organisations having common or related interests in seed.

ISTA President Joël Léchappé and Officer Francisco Krzyzanowski signing the new ISTA Articles.



ISTA Annual Meeting 2012III. Membership

Article 4 Governments, Authorities and Members(a) GovernmentThe word Government shall mean member of the United Nations or its specialised agencies or Distinct Economies as recog-nised by international fora.

(b) Designated AuthorityA Designated Authority is an authority designated by a Government to act on its behalf in designating Designated Members and in liaison with the Association.

(c) Designated MemberA Designated Member is a Personal Mem-ber designated by their Designated Au-thority and entitled to vote, subject to the provisions of Article 12.

(d) Member LaboratoryA Member Laboratory is a laboratory en-gaged in the testing of seed which supports the Association and its objectives and is admitted by the Association.

(e) Personal MemberA Personal Member is a person engaged in the science or practice of seed testing or in the technical control of such activities who supports the Association and its ob-jectives and is admitted by the Association. A Personal Member may be nominated by a Member Laboratory to represent the Member Laboratory in the affairs of the Association.(f) Associate MemberAn Associate Member is a person who is not a Personal Member, but who supports the Association and its objectives, and is admitted by the Association.

(g) Corporate MemberA Corporate Member is any organisation which supports the Association and its objectives, pays an appropriate annual fee to the Association, and is admitted by the Association.

(h) Honorary Life MemberAn Honorary Life Member is a person who in the opinion of the Association has made an outstanding contribution to the Association, and has been honoured by election to the status.

(i) Accredited LaboratoryAn Accredited Laboratory is a member laboratory accredited by the Executive Committee according to the Accreditation Standards approved under Article 15(c)(15) of the Constitution.

Article 5 Withdrawal

(a) Any Government may withdraw its Designated Members from the Associa-tion by giving notice of withdrawal at any time. Such notice shall be communicated to the Secretary General who shall inform all Members thereof.

(b) If a Government states, in its notice, that its withdrawal is because it cannot comply with an amendment adopted under Article 20, such withdrawal shall be effec-tive on the date of the entry into force of such amendment, provided the Secretary General has received the notice not more than 30 days after the entry into force of the amendment. Withdrawal under any other circumstances shall become effective at the end of the calendar year in which the notice for that purpose is given.

(c) The financial obligation to the Associa-tion of a Government which has given no-tice of withdrawal shall include the entire calendar year in which the notice is given, except that, if the withdrawal is effective on the date of the entry into force of an amendment as provided above, the Gov-ernment shall have no further liability for subscription after that date.

(d) Any Member may withdraw their Membership from the Association by giv-ing notice of withdrawal at any time. Such notice shall be communicated to the Secre-tary General who shall inform all Members thereof.

(e) If a Member states, in their notice, that the withdrawal is because they cannot comply with an amendment adopted under Article 20, such withdrawal shall be effec-tive on the date of the entry into force of such amendment, provided the Secretary General has received the notice not more than 30 days after the entry into force of the amendment. Withdrawal under any other circumstances shall become effective at the end of the calendar year in which the notice for that purpose is given.

(f) The financial obligation to the Asso-ciation of a Member for which notice of withdrawal has been given shall include the entire calendar year in which the notice is given, except that, if the withdrawal is ef-fective on the date of the entry into force of an amendment as provided above, the Member shall have no further liability for subscription after that date.

Article 6 Protection of Members

Any Member who has not consented to a resolution which infringes the law or the Articles of the Association is entitled by law to challenge such resolution in court within one month of learning thereof.

Article 7 ExclusionAny exclusion of Members requires a reso-lution by the Members and good cause.

IV. Bodies and Capacity to Act

Article 8 Bodies

(a) General Meeting of Members

(b) Executive Committee (as the governing body of the Association)

(c) Financial Auditors

Article 9 Capacity to Act

(a) Legal entities have capacity to act once the (governing) bodies required by law and their articles of Association have been appointed.

(b) The (governing) bodies express the will of the legal entity.

(c) They bind the legal entity by concluding transactions and by their other actions.

(d) The governing officers are also person-ally liable for their wrongful acts.

A. The General Meeting of Members

Article 10 Powers

(a) The General Meeting of Members ap-points the Officers and the Executive Com-mittee and decides all matters which are not reserved to other governing bodies of the Association.


ISTA Annual Meeting 2012(b) It supervises the activities of the Ex-ecutive Committee and Financial Auditors and may at any time dismiss – whenever justified by good cause – the latter without prejudice to any contractual rights of those dismissed.

Article 11 Meetings

(a) An Ordinary General Meeting of Members shall normally be held every year, but Extraordinary General Meetings may be held when considered necessary by the Executive Committee or by law when requested by one-fifth of the Members.

(b) Matters in dispute at General Meetings of the Association shall be referred to a vote.

(c) In the event of a tie in a vote, the Presi-dent, or in his/her absence the Vice-Presi-dent shall have a deciding vote at General Meetings of the Association and of the Executive Committee. In all other commit-tees of the Association, in the event of a tie, the acting Chairman shall have a decid-ing vote.

(d) Designated Members designated by forty percent of the Designated Authorities shall constitute a quorum at General Meet-ings of the Association. In determining the percentage, fractions less than 0.50 shall be dropped and those 0.50 or greater shall be regarded as a whole number. If the Ordi-nary General Meeting is not quorate a ‘by correspondence’ vote will be held to allow the adoption of Ordinary General Meeting agenda items.

(e) The agenda for an Ordinary General Meeting shall include:(1) Call to order.(2) President's address.(3) Roll call of Designated Members enti-tled to vote.(4) Comments about the minutes of the previous General Meeting.(5) Report of the Executive Committee.(6) Report of the Secretary General.(7) Fixation of annual subscriptions.(8) Consideration and adoption of reports.(9) Announcement of the place and date for the next Ordinary General Meeting.(10) Any other business raised by a Mem-ber, of which notice in writing has been received by the Secretary General at least

two months prior to the date of the Gen-eral Meeting.(11) Any other business raised by consent of the Executive Committee.(12) President's closing address.(13) Adjournment.(f) Additionally at the Ordinary General Meeting held in the third year after the Ordinary General Meeting at which offic-ers and members-at-large of the Executive Committee were appointed:(14) Discharge of the Executive Committee.(15) Election of Officers and members-at-large of the Executive Committee.(16) Installation of new Officers.

(g) The Executive Committee approved minutes of the Ordinary General Meet-ing will be published on the ISTA website within two months of the Ordinary Gen-eral Meeting. If there are no comments re-quiring amendment to the minutes within the subsequent two month period, the min-utes will be considered approved. If there are comments and the comments are ac-cepted by the Executive Committee, then the minutes including the comments will be considered approved and published on the ISTA web site.

(h) Any comments about the minutes of the previous General Meeting will be con-sidered at the next Ordinary General Meet-ing under agenda Article 11 (e) (4).

Article 12 Voting

(a) Irrespective of the number of Des-ignated Members designated by a single Government, only one vote may be cast on behalf of that Government.

(b) The following categories of motions re-quire for adoption a two-thirds majority of those voting:(1) Motions to alter these Articles.(2) Motions to dissolve the Association.(3) Motions arising during General Meet-ings and relating to temporary adjourn-ment, closing of debate, or postponement of action.

All other motions require a simple major-ity of those voting for adoption.

(c) On urgent matters as determined by the Executive Committee, and in which the Ex-ecutive Committee is not authorised to act,

voting members may be requested by the President to vote by correspondence dur-ing the period between Ordinary General Meetings of the Association in accordance with letter (a) and (b) of this Article.

(d) Each Member is by law excluded from voting on any resolution concerning a transaction or dispute between him or her, his or her spouse or a lineal relative on the one hand and the Association on the other.

Article 13 Officers

(a) The Officers of the Association shall be:(1) President.(2) Vice-President.

(b) The tenure of office of the President and Vice-President shall be from the adjourn-ment of the Ordinary General Meeting at which they were appointed to the adjourn-ment of the Ordinary General Meeting of Members held in the third year after the Ordinary General Meeting at which they were appointed. If the Ordinary General Meeting at which elections are held is not quorate the tenure of the existing Execu-tive Committee will continue until a ‘by correspondence’ vote can be held to dis-charge the Executive Committee and to appoint a new Vice-President and new Ex-ecutive Committee.

(c) On completion of the tenure of office the outgoing President shall not at any time in the future be eligible for reappoint-ment as President or for appointment as Vice-President.

Article 14 Functions of Officers

(a) The President shall call and preside at General Meetings of the Association and meetings of the Executive Committee. The President shall be an ex-officio member of all committees of the Association.

(b) The Vice-President shall assist the President and, in the event of the inabil-ity of the President to serve, shall carry out such duties as pertain to the office of the President. In the event that a President cannot continue in office for the remainder of his/her term, the Vice-President will be referred to as the President for the remain-ing period of that Presidency and will also


ISTA Annual Meeting 2012serve for the expected period of his/her own Presidency.

Article 15 Executive Committee

(a) The Executive Committee shall con-sist of the President and Vice-President, together with nine members-at-large who shall be Designated Members.

(b) The tenure of office of the members-at-large shall be the same as that for Officers as provided in Article 13 (b).

(c) The functions of the Executive Com-mittee shall be as follows: (1) The Executive Committee shall manage and direct the affairs of the Association according to the provisions of this Con-stitution and to decisions arrived at by the Association at Ordinary or Extraordinary General Meetings.(2) The Executive Committee shall appoint a Secretary General. The task of the Sec-retary General is to manage ISTA under the authority and the control of the Execu-tive Committee. The relations between the Executive Committee and the Secretary General are laid down in the Management Regulations, established and approved by the Executive Committee.(3) In the event of vacancies in the panel of Officers or members-at-large of the Ex-ecutive Committee, the remaining mem-bers of the Committee are empowered to appoint substitutes to serve until the next Ordinary General Meeting of the Associa-tion at which the election of officers and members-at-large will be held.(4) The Meetings of the Executive Com-mittee shall be called in accordance with the provisions of Article 14 or on the writ-ten request of six or more of its members.(5) The Executive Committee is empowered to form committees to study and report on problems appertaining to the affairs of the Association, to establish and maintain liai-son with such other organisations as may be concerned with the objects of the Asso-ciation, and plan and approve conferences and training courses aimed at furthering the objectives of the Association.(6) Responsibility for the finances of the Association is vested in the Executive Committee.(7) The Executive Committee shall ap-point an Editor to “Seed Science and Technology”.

(8) The Executive Committee shall approve interpretations of the International Rules for Seed Testing, when need therefore aris-es, after having consulted with the techni-cal committees concerned(9) The Executive Committee is empow-ered to appoint, at each Ordinary General Meeting of Members, an Auditor who shall not be an Officer or member-at-large of the Executive Committee and who need not be a Designated Member.(10) The Executive Committee shall ren-der to each Ordinary General Meeting of Members of the Association a full account of its proceedings and of the activities of the Association and shall present to said General Meeting an audited statement of accounts up to the end of the preceding calendar year.(11) The Executive Committee is empow-ered to call and summon an International Seed Testing Congress in conjunction with an Ordinary General Meeting of Members of the Association. All such Congresses shall be devoted to the reading of scientific papers, discussions and demonstrations on seed investigations, and such related subjects as appertain to the objects of the Association.(12) The Executive Committee is empow-ered to employ and pay for such clerical as-sistance as is deemed necessary.(13) The Executive Committee is empow-ered to approve the admission of new Members of the Association.(14) The Executive Committee is empow-ered to delegate the handling of special problems.(15) The Executive Committee is empow-ered to approve and publish Accreditation Standards, to accredit member laboratories and to authorise such laboratories to issue International Seed Testing Association Certificates.(16) The Executive Committee shall prior to an Ordinary General Meeting of Mem-bers decide the place of the next Ordi-nary General Meeting of Members of the Association.(17) Six members of the Executive Com-mittee shall constitute a quorum. Between meetings, business shall be transacted by correspondence in which at least 6 mem-bers must participate to effect a decision.

Article 16 Nomination and Election

(a) At the Ordinary General Meeting of Members which completes the tenure of office of the President and Vice-President, the outgoing Vice-President, provided that person was duly elected to that office at the Ordinary General Meeting of Members three years previous, without further elec-tion shall be appointed President for the ensuing period. If at this Ordinary General Meeting, for whatever reason, the outgo-ing Vice-President is not available for ap-pointment as President, the office of the President shall be filled by election by the procedure prescribed for officers in the let-ters (b) and (c) of this Article.

(b) Subject to the provisions of the letter (a) of this Article, the election of Officers and members-at-large of the Executive Committee shall be by ballot at an Ordi-nary General Meeting of the Association.

(c) Subject to the provisions of the letter (a) of this Article, nominations for the election of Officers and of members-at-large of the Executive Committee may be submitted only by Designated Members. Such nomi-nations shall be in writing supported by a mover and a seconder (both being Desig-nated Members) and must be received by the Secretary General at the latest on the day prior to the Ordinary General Meeting at which the elections are to take place.

C. Auditors

Article 17 Figures

(a) The Association must submit its ac-counts to a full audit by external auditors if two of the following figures are exceeded in two successive business years:(1) Total assets of CHF 10 million.(2) Turnover of CHF 20 million.(3) Average annual total of 50 full-time staff.

(b) The Association must submit its ac-counts to a limited audit by external audi-tors if a Member with personal liability or an obligation to provide further capital so requests.

(c) The provisions of the Code of Obliga-tions on external auditors for companies apply mutatis mutandis.


ISTA Annual Meeting 2012(d) In all other cases the Articles of the Association and the General Meeting are free to make such auditing arrangements as they deem fit.

(e) The Association must be registered if it is subject to an audit requirement or if it conducts a commercial operation in pur-suit of its objects.

V. Assets of the Association and Liability

Article 18 Assets of the Association

(a) Payment of monies belonging to the Association may be made only in connec-tion with matters directly related to the ob-jects of the Association as provided for in this Constitution.

The income of the Association shall be derived from annual membership sub-scriptions, and from payments and dona-tions received from persons, organisations, or governments for specified or general purposes.

(c) The financial year of the Association shall be from January 1st to December 31st, and subscriptions for each financial year shall be payable on January 1st of that year.

(d) The amount of the annual subscription for Members and the additional fee for Ac-credited Laboratories shall be determined annually at an Ordinary General Meeting of the Association, due consideration be-ing given to statements submitted in ac-cordance with Article 15 (c) (9) and letter (g) of this Article. Notification of propos-als to change the rate of annual subscrip-tions shall be sent to the Designated Au-thorities and Members of the Association at least two months prior to an Ordinary General Meeting.

(e) (1) The representation by any Desig-nated Member, the subscription of or for whom/which is still in arrears by the end of the current financial year, shall lapse, provided that due notice of arrears in sub-scription has been given by the Secretary General.(2) The membership of any Member, the subscription of or for whom/which is still in arrears by the end of the current financial

year, shall lapse, provided that due notice of arrears in subscription has been given by the Secretary General.

(f) Accounts of all monies received and ex-pended by the Association shall be kept by the Secretary General.

(g) A statement showing the financial po-sition of the Association, examined and certified by the Auditor, shall be circulated annually to the Members of the Associa-tion and published in the “Activity Report of the ISTA Committees”.

Article 19 Liability

The Association is liable for its obligations with its assets. This liability is limited to the assets. The Members are not personally liable.

VI. Amendments and Dissolution

Article 20 Amendments

The provisions of this Constitution may be amended as follows:

(a) Any proposal to alter the provisions of this Constitution must be received in writ-ing by the Secretary General at least three months prior to the date of the General Meeting of the Association at which it is to be considered.

(b) The Secretary General shall communi-cate any such proposal to each Member of the Association at least two months prior to the date of such General Meeting of the Association and shall maintain records showing evidence of such communications.

(c) Amendments of this Constitution shall come into force only if they receive the sup-port of at least two-thirds of the Designat-ed Members voting at a General Meeting of the Association, provided a quorum is present.

Article 21 Dissolution of the Association

(a) Dissolution of the Association can take place when a General Meeting called for this purpose shall have voted for the dissolution of the Association by a two-thirds majority of the Designated

Members voting, provided a quorum is present. The funds remaining after disso-lution of the Association shall be given to (an) institution(s) granted exemption from taxes with the same or similar objects. Re-maining funds cannot be allocated to the Membership.

(b) The Association is dissolved by opera-tion of law if it is insolvent or if the Ex-ecutive Committee may no longer be ap-pointed in accordance with the Articles of the Association.

(c) Where the objects of the Association are unlawful or immoral, the competent authority or an interested party may apply for a court order of dissolution.

VII. Final Provisions: Coming into Effect and Interpretation

Article 22 Coming into Effect

Once the Articles, or changes to the Arti-cles, have been adopted by the voting mem-bers at a General Meeting and they are signed on behalf of the Association they come into effect.

The Articles adopted as Constitution in previous meetings of the Association are therefore annulled once the Articles are signed.

Article 23 Interpretation

In any case where the interpretation of this Constitution is in doubt, the English text thereof shall govern.

The Articles adopted as Constitution in the Zurich 2011 meeting are now annulled. These revised Articles come into immedi-ate effect on:

Date:

Signed on behalf of the Association

ISTA President

ISTA Vice-President/Officer



Auditors’ Meeting 2012R. El-Khadem and B. Opra

ISTA Accreditation and Technical Department

The ISTA auditors met on 12 June 2012 in Venlo, the Netherlands, during the

Annual Meeting of the Association. Eight technical auditors participated besides the three ISTA system auditors.

General information regarding ISTA audits

The technical auditors were presented with the audit plan for 2012 and 2013. They were also informed about the time periods necessary to produce the audit reports in 2011. The auditors committed themselves to try to provide the audit reports within 14 days of the audit date.

GMO Workshop/Training for ISTA auditors

The GMO workshop for technical audi-tors has been scheduled for October 2012. The seed testing laboratory of the Univer-sity of Bologna (LaRAS) volunteered to host this training session and invited the ISTA auditors. The workshop will cover critical steps of GMO testing, followed by practical demonstrations in the laboratory. The second major topic of the training will be statistical and quality assurance aspects.

Monitoring of samplers

As already mentioned in the April 2012 issue of STI (No. 143), “Monitoring ISTA samplers: results of questionnaire”, the ISTA Executive Committee has confirmed the compulsory requirements for a moni-toring system for samplers as stated in the current ISTA Accreditation Standard. The Executive Committee has stated that check sampling is strongly recommended, and that monitoring must include audits. The

ISTA Bulking and Sampling Committee (BSC) was provided with a list of questions and was asked to support in clarifying the minimum requirements that a laboratory must fulfil to meet the ISTA Accreditation Standard. The list included questions such as:– If check sampling is performed, what is

the minimum check sampling rate?– Can check sampling be omitted if the

laboratory has an annual internal audit for sampling that covers every sampler? Is this a physical audit or can it be a video audit, since some laboratories have many samplers located far away from the laboratory.

– The ISTA Accreditation Standard states that the laboratory should be able to detect trends. If there is no check sam-pling, how would it be possible to detect trends?The BSC addressed some of the ques-

tions, and is working on the remaining ones.

Technical requirements

The Accreditation and Technical De-partment often receives queries about the calibration requirements for specific equip-ment. The technical auditors were asked whether they were willing to participate in a survey. A questionnaire will list vari-ous types of equipment and ask specific questions regarding the expected calibra-tion (e.g. frequency of internal or external calibrations or checks). The technical au-ditors agreed to participate and to provide information regarding the frequency and type of calibration that they would expect when auditing a laboratory. The results will be used to produce a summary the various expectations for equipment. The outcome of the questionnaire might initiate further discussion within the technical auditors’ group or discussion with the Technical Committees.

Selected documents for translation

– Many documents are usually requested to be translated for an ISTA audit. The ISTA auditors discussed whether it would be possible to reduce the number of quality documents.

– The auditors stated that under specific circumstances the complete quality documentation must be translated and provided. This is the case for laborato-ries applying for their first accreditation audit. When a laboratory requests tests to be included in the scope of accredi-tation, quality documentation related to these tests must also be submitted for a document review prior to the audit.

– The auditors discussed the possibility to not select such quality documents for tests where the laboratory performed very well in the proficiency test pro-gramme. The laboratories will also be asked to provide the number of pages and the type of the documents before re-questing the translation.

– The auditors agreed that it is essential to review some of the laboratory’s quality documentation prior to the audit. The auditors will still try to reduce the num-ber of documents requested for transla-tion without reducing the quality of the audit.

Questions and answers to ISTA Technical Committees

During ISTA audits we face questions from the laboratories that are later on sent to the ISTA Technical Committees. This is a selection of answers provided by the Committees which are relevant to the audit process.– Automatic sampling: Is it allowed that

the settings of the automatic sampling device can be changed at all times? An-swer of ISTA Bulking and Sampling Committee: the authorised seed sam-pler takes the responsibility for the



ISTA Annual Meeting 2012adjustments, and signs the documenta-tion, while allowing the other person to change the settings. This other person will need some training, and records shall be available. The ISTA-accredited laboratories should be able to train and authorise somebody to carry out the duties of adjusting the automatic sam-pler. The other possibility is to increase the number of ISTA-authorised seed samplers.

– Reporting the moisture determination result on an ISTA Certificate: Is the lab-oratory required to state the temperature range, e.g. 130–133 °C? Answer of ISTA

Moisture Committee: the laboratory can also just report the temperature used, e.g. 130 °C.

– Reporting of other seeds found during the purity analysis: The laboratory re-ported a species not listed in the list of stabilized names. However, the species was listed in GRIN. Answer of ISTA Purity Committee: if the species is listed in GRIN but missing on the Stabilized List, the laboratory can report the spe-cies. However, if the species is listed in the Stabilized List and a new name is given in GRIN, the Stabilized List name is to be used.

Other information

– Norbert Leist informed the ISTA audi-tors that he will retire as technical au-ditor as of January 2013. Norbert was thanked for his good work as ISTA tech-nical auditor.

– The ISTA auditors were informed that Mary Jane Kelly will leave her position as ISTA system auditor as of the end of June 2012. Mary Jane was thanked for her good work.�

Evaluation of participant survey

Martina Haefeli and Patricia Muschick ISTA Administration Department


Following the ISTA Annual Meeting 2012, the Secretariat sent out an online

evaluation survey to the 272 participants. This was completed by 80 participants, or about one third. The Secretariat would like to thank everyone who took the time to an-swer the questions and give their views on the various issues. This will help the Secre-tariat a lot when assisting future hosts in the organization of ISTA events.

A synopsis of some of the questions and answers is presented below.

ISTA Seminar “New developments and technologies in seed testing”

Overall, the presentations at the ISTA Seminar were seen as good or even very good (Fig. 1). For some participants the presentations were too commercial with not enough scientific background, and too focused on the Dutch seed industry.

ISTA Technical Committees

The presentations of the Technical Com-mittees were rated as good and mostly even very good (Fig. 2). There were also state-ments received that both quality and scien-tific and technical depth varied between the different Committees.

Ordinary Meeting

The Ordinary Meeting was rated as good or even very good (Fig. 3). The par-ticipants especially appreciated the good preparation and adherence to the schedule.

Exhibition

According to the comments given by the participants, the exhibitors mostly cov-ered the areas of interest. However, some felt that exhibitors with a focus on differ-ent types of seed equipment would have been an asset, and some also expected the exhibition to be bigger. With regards to the ISTA information booth, most of the answers received were either good or very good.

8%

39% 32%

8% 6% 3% 0% 4%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

The seminar "New developments and technologies in seed testing" (June 11)

Figure 1. Ratings given to the ISTA Seminar “New developments and technologies in seed testing”.



8%

42% 35%

3% 0% 0% 0%

12%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

The Ordinary Meeting (June 14)

Figure 3. Ratings given to the Ordinary Meeting.

Floriade

Most of the participants rated the Flo-riade 2012 as good or even very good (Fig. 4). Some found it a shame that be-cause of the full meeting schedule (and unsuitable weather conditions), they didn’t have much time to visit the Floriade.

Conclusion

The overall impression of the partici-pants to the ISTA Annual Meeting 2012 was good. However, many found that the location was not very suitable for an ISTA meeting, because of the long travel dis-tances from the hotels to the meeting venue and between the hotels. On the other hand, the Floriade was seen as a pleasant ‘plus’ to the Meeting. The general impression of the Meeting programme was very good.

The most important reason for attend-ing the Meeting is clearly the networking aspect, in being able to meet and exchange knowledge with other seed experts. An-other important expectation that was mentioned is to get updates on new seed testing solutions available. Some of the participants were more interested in prac-tical solutions, whereas others have higher preferences for theoretical information. The feeling was that the meeting presented an appropriate blend of information.

Most of the participant’s expectations were met. If not, the reasons were mostly due to the lack of interaction possibilities with other participants after the meetings.

We are happy to see that most of the participants plan to attend the ISTA Con-gress 2013 in Antalya, Turkey. Those who indicated that they did not plan to attend the Congress stated the reasons as being mainly due to insecurity of obtaining travel approvals from their superiors/employers.�

18% 24%

30%

13% 7%

1% 0% 7%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

The exhibition "Floriade 2012"

Figure 4. Ratings given to the Floriade.

10%

49%

25%

11% 3%

0% 0% 2% 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

The presentations of the ISTA Technical Committees (June 12 and 13)

Figure 2. Ratings given to the presentations of the ISTA Technical Committees.

Draft Minutes of the ISTA Ordinary Meeting 2012The draft minutes of the ISTA Ordinary Meeting 2012, held in Venlo, the Netherlands, on June 14, are avail-able on the ISTA web site at www.seedtest.org/OM12_Minutes



Changes to the International Rules for Seed Testing 2013 Edition

Jonathan Taylor ISTA Publications Unit

Again this year, a number of changes and amendments to the ISTA In-

ternational Rules for Seed Testing were proposed at the Ordinary Meeting under Agenda point 9. These included final modi-fications to the Rules Proposals which were discussed and agreed on at the meeting of the Rules Committee the previous day.

Major amendments are that as from 2013, Orange Certificates may be issued for partial seed lots without further testing, and that a germination test may be termi-nated at a predetermined level. There is a new seed health method for tobamoviruses on tomatoes, and a PCR testing option for Xanthomonas campestris on brassicas.

A further major amendment is the in-crease in the size of herbage seed lots for approved seed production plants.

With regard to the date of coming into effect, the Rules Amendments are split into two parts, A and B.

Part A includes all changes except those relating to herbage seed lot size. It will come into effect on 1 January 2013.

Part B includes the changes relating to herbage seed lot size. It will be dispatched in April 2013, and will come into effect on 1 July 2013.

The Rules Proposal document listing all approved Rules changes for 2013, with the final modifications marked in green, can be downloaded from the ISTA web site at https://www.seedtest.org/Rules_ch2013.

Chapter 1: Certificates– Issuing of original Orange International

Seed Lot Certificates for partial seed lots

Chapter 2: Sampling– Addition of Solanum nigrum– Addition of Prunus spp., for species that

are difficult to distinguish– Submission of large herbage seed lots– Clarification of taking the container-

sample for heterogeneity testing

Chapter 3: The Purity Analysis– Transferring Arachis to PSD 21– PSDs 11 and 20–24: broken seed or

separated cotyledons contained within testa must be considered to be pure seed

– PSD 36: removal of pedicel no longer compulsory

Chapter 5: The Germination Test– Amendment of seedling abnormalities

11/05 and 11/06– Ending a germination test at a pre-

determined germination level

Annex to Chapter 7: Seed Health Testing Methods– New method 7-028: Detection of infec-

tious tobamoviruses on Lycopersicon esculentum by the local lesion assay on Nicotiana tabacum plants

– Modification to method 7-019 by add-ing a PCR testing option

– Minimum recommended seed sample sizes for seed health methods (Amend-ments to methods 7-001a, 7-001b, 7-002a, 7-002b, 7-016, 7-017 and 7-018)

– Updates to text of method 7-024

Chapter 9: Moisture Content– Removal from Table 9A Part 1 of the

low-temperature method for those spe-cies where it has not been individually validated

Chapter 13: Testing Seeds by Weighed Replicates– Clarification of purity testing for

weighed replicates test�

Seed Science and TechnologySubscriptions:Print CHF 449.00Online (single user) CHF 393.00Print & online (single user) CHF 497.00Online (multiple users) CHF 1372.00Print & online (multiple users) CHF 1739.00

Available from the ISTA Secretariat or online at www.seedtest.org/sst



ASSOCIATION NEWS

New face at the ISTA Secretariat

Florina Palada

System Auditor

Florina Palada was born in Cucuruzu, Romania, and shortly afterwards moved to Bucharest with her parents. The fact that she lived in Bucharest did not stop her from choosing a career in agriculture. She graduated from the agricultural high school in Călugăreni and the Agriculture University, and gained a Master’s degree in Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary

Medicine, Bucharest. In her PhD thesis she studied the behaviour of some varie-ties of Lolium perenne in various storage conditions over time. The thesis was elabo-rated at the University of Craiova, Roma-nia. From 2001, she participated in a large number of classes to deepen her knowledge about the establishment and deployment of the quality management system in an organization and carrying out audits in ac-cordance with ISO 9001 and EN ISO /IEC 17025 standards. She successively worked in two laboratories for seed quality con-trol in Romania, starting as a purity ana-lyst and sampler. After nearly 20 years she became the coordinator of sampling and testing of seed lots for International ISTA Certificates and also the Quality Manager. In the same time, she has been an official inspector for field control and also an

auditor. In the past six years she has been Quality Manager of a multinational seed production company, coordinating the activity of the Quality Assurance Depart-ment with responsibilities in the QA of every step of the sowing seed production (field, processing, testing and sales), and deployment and maintenance of the qual-ity management system according to ISO 9001. In the same time, she managed client complaints, sampling activity according to the ISTA Rules and the relationships with Romanian official authorities in the seed industry. She also coordinated the process of ISTA accreditation of the company lab-oratory for sampling and testing. Florina Palada started work in the ISTA Secretari-at as ISTA System Auditor in August 2012.�

Greetings from Canada to all my for-mer colleagues and ISTA friends

from around the world! After a whirlwind four years of traveling to audit seed labo-ratories in more than forty different coun-tries, I am now back in Ottawa with family and friends close-by.

With over 6000 photographs on my lap-top, I hope to put together a wonderful memoir of all the people and places I was fortunate enough to travel to and perform accreditation and re-accreditation audits for since August, 2008.

Meeting people from so many diverse backgrounds has enriched my life in ways I would never have thought possible. The cultures and customs, as well as the kind-ness and thoughtfulness of audit partici-pants I was exposed to, will never be for-gotten. I will keep all of you in my thoughts and hope for a re-union one day.

I will definitely miss the excitement of traveling to exotic destinations, but I hope to be able to see more of Canada as an au-ditor here in the near future.

I also intend to consult for any laborato-ries interested in ISTA accreditation.

I am very honoured to have worked for the International Seed Testing Association whose goals are so important to the seed industry worldwide. I wish the Secretariat all the best for a healthy, secure future with many more laboratories wishing to become accredited!

All the best,MJ Kelly (former ISTA System Auditor)�

My European sojourn comes to a closeMary Jane Kelly

Call for registration: 17th ISTA GMO Proficiency Test on soya (see p. 58)


30th ISTA CongressAntalya, Turkey, 12–18 June 2013OverviewTue–Thur4–6 June

ISTA Vigour Workshop, İzmir(see page 59)

Thur–Sun6–9 June

ISTA Workshop on Purity and Germination, Ankara (see page 60)

Tuesday11 June

Welcome reception

Wednesday12 June

Opening ceremony

Wed–Fri12–14 June

ISTA Seed Symposium(see page 38)

Friday14 June

Official Dinner

Sat–Mon15–17 June

Presentation of ISTA’s technical work (see page 32)

Monday17 June

Discussion on ISTA strategy 2013–2016Discussion Forums

Tuesday18 June

ISTA Ordinary General Meeting with election of Executive Committee (see page 32)

Wed–Fri19–21 June

Post-Congress tours to İstanbul, İzmir, Kapadokya and Antalya (see page 37)



Invitation by Mr. M. Mehdi EkerMinister for Food, Agriculture and Livestock of the Republic of Turkey

Invitation by Dr. Joël LéchappéPresident of the International Seed Testing Association

We, as Turkey and the Ministry are pleased to host the 30th ISTA Con-

gress to be held in 2013. The organiza-tion in Antalya of this international seed

congress, which is held once every three years, has importance in terms of history, culture, tourism, agriculture sector and seeding industry.

This land covers the earth where seed was sowed for plant culture for the first time ten thousand years ago.

Our country is like a bridge between East and West in the fields of cultural coopera-tion, trade and agriculture. It has a strate-gic significance for ensuring cooperation in those fields. Therefore, it is an active busi-ness area for seed manufacturing compa-nies today.

Furthermore, Turkey allows for growing a number of agricultural products, because of its geographical location, and since it is located on the subtropical (temperate) zone containing various climate regions, and it has a Mediterranean climate with hot and dry summers and relatively mild-cool and rainy winters.

Turkey, being a genetic centre for endem-ic plants with a variety of agriculture and plant patterns, puts forward plant breed-ing, seed production and trade. Conser-vation of genetic sources and their use in plant breeding, which are some of the main themes of the Congress, are of vital impor-tance within this context. I would like to invite the seed world family, seed scientists, seed specialists, officials and researchers from all over the world to the 30th ISTA International Seed Congress to be held between 12 and 18 June, 2013 in Antalya, Turkey as the host country.

I would like to express my gratitude to ISTA for organizing this Congress in our country.

Mehdi EkerMinister of Food, Agriculture andLivestock of the Republic of Turkey

Dear colleagues and friends,It is a great pleasure and honour

for me to invite you all to attend the 30th ISTA Congress in Antalya, Turkey. ISTA Congresses are a major worldwide event with regards to seed quality determination and the most important regular event in the life of our Association.

Also for the 30th ISTA Congress, the Executive Committee and the Turkish National Organisation Committee have taken care to offer participants a full and interesting programme. This programme includes technical workshops for the train-ing of seed analysts, a scientific symposium discussing the latest results in applied seed science, a detailed insight into the work of

all 18 ISTA Committees, including their achievements and future plans, and two discussion sessions with focus on topics re-lated to future developments in the area of seed quality determination. The Ordinary General Meeting to handle the affairs of the Association will end the Congress.

I’m convinced that the 30th ISTA Con-gress will become a milestone for our As-sociation, and I’m looking forward to per-sonally welcoming you at this important and outstanding event in Turkey.

Joël LéchappéPresident of the International Seed Testing Association


Draft programme Venue: Kervansaray Hotel Lara, Antalya

Tuesday, 11 June 201312:00–19:00 Registration desk open18:30–21:00 Welcome receptionWednesday, 12 June 201308:00–17:00 Registration desk open08:30–09:30 Opening ceremony09:30–10:00 Presentation: The seed industry in Turkey10:00–10:30 Coffee break 10:30–11:00 ISTA Seed Symposium 2013: Evaluation of seed

quality: a key step in exploiting the benefits of plant breeding and genetic conservation (see page 38)Symposium Convenor: Dr. Alison Powell, University of Aberdeen, UK

11:00–12:30 Session 1: Role of quality evaluation in seed productionChair and Lead Speaker: Francisco Krzyzanowski, EMBRAPA Soja, BrazilPresentation title: The role of quality evaluation in seed production as exemplified by soybean seed production

12:30–13:30 Lunch break 13:30–14:30 Session 1 (continued)14:30–15:00 Poster session 1

Chair: Hülya İlbi, Ege University, İzmir, Turkey15:00–15:30 Coffee break15:30–17:00 Poster session 1 (continued)Thursday, 13 June 201308:00–16:30 Registration desk open08:30–10:00 Session 2: Seed storage for commercial use and

genetic conservationChair and Lead Speaker: Robin Probert, Millennium Seed Bank, RBG Kew, UKPresentation title: Pre-storage factors critically affect the quality of seeds for storage and use: a review of the underlying biology and practical implications

10:00–10:30 Coffee break

10:30–11:30 Session 2 (continued)11:30–12:30 Poster session 2

Chair: Hülya İlbi, Ege University, İzmir, Turkey12:30–13:30 Lunch break 13:30–14:30 Poster session 2 (continued)14:30–15:00 Session 3 (ISSS collaborative session): Physi-

ological, biochemical and molecular markers of seed qualityChair and Lead Speaker: Françoise Corbineau, Uni-versité Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, Paris, FrancePresentation title: Markers of seed quality: from a physiological to a molecular approach

15:00–15:30 Coffee break15:30–16:30 Session 3 (continued)Friday, 14 June 201308:00–17:00 Registration desk open08:30–09:30 Session 3 (continued)09:30–10:00 Session 4: Advanced methods in seed quality

evaluationChair and Lead Speaker: Beni Kaufman, Pioneer, USAPresentation title: Next generation seed quality testing

10:00–10:30 Coffee break 10:30–12:30 Session 4 (continued)12:30–13:30 Lunch break 13:30–15:00 Session 5: Evaluation and improvement of

physiological qualityChair and Lead Speaker: Alison Powell, University of Aberdeen, UKPresentation title: Electrical conductivity measure-ments of solute leakage: past and current use and their future application for rapid assessment of germination and vigour

15:00–15:30 Coffee break15:30–16:30 Session 5 (continued)16:30–17:00 Conclusion of Symposium19:00–23:00 Official Dinner


Saturday, 15 June 201308:00–18:30 Registration desk open08:00–18:30 Presentations of ISTA’s technical work and

meetings of ISTA Technical Committees08:00 Opening by the ISTA President, Joël Léchappé,

France08:00–09:00 Bulking & Sampling Committee09:00–10:00 Flower Seed Committee10:00–10:30 Coffee break10:30–11:30 Forest Tree & Shrub Seed Committee11:30–12:30 Germination Committee12:30–13:30 Lunch break13:30–14:30 Moisture Committee14:30–15:30 Statistics Committee15:30–16:00 Coffee break16:00–17:00 Variety Committee17:00–18:00 GMO CommitteeSunday, 16 June 201308:00–18:30 Presentations of ISTA’s technical work and

meetings of ISTA Technical Committees (continued)

08:00–09:00 Purity Committee09:00–10:00 Seed Health Committee10:00–10:30 Coffee break10:30–11:30 Seed Storage Committee11:30–12:30 Tetrazolium Committee12:30–13:30 Lunch break13:30–14:30 Seed Vigour Committee14:30–15:00 Nomenclature Committee15:00–15:30 Editorial Board of Seed Science and Technology15:30–16:00 Coffee break16:00–18:30 Rules CommitteeMonday, 17 June 201308:00–10:00 Presentations of ISTA’s technical work and

meetings of ISTA Technical Committees (continued)

08:00–08:30 Advanced Technologies Committee08:30–10:00 Proficiency Testing, Laboratory Accreditation and

Quality Assurance Programme

10:00–10:30 Coffee break10:30–13:00 Preparation for the Ordinary General Meeting:

discussion on the Draft ISTA Strategy 2013–2016

13:00–14:00 Lunch break14:00–17:30 Discussion forums14:00–15:30 Do the current principles and requirements for

the ISTA Rules meet the future needs for devel-opments in seed technology?

15:30–16:00 Coffee break16:00–17:30 Discussion on the use and international stan-

dardization of DNA technologies in the area of seeds

Tuesday, 18 June 201308:30–17:30 ISTA Ordinary General Meeting08:30–08:45 Welcome by the ISTA President, Joël Léchappé08:45–10:00 1. Call to order

2. President’s address3. Roll call of Designated Members entitled to vote4. Comments about the minutes of the previous

General Meeting5. Report of the Executive Committee6. Report of the Secretary General

10:00–10:30 Coffee break10:30–12:30 7. ISTA Strategy 2013–2016

8. Election of Officers and members-at-large of the Executive Committee

9. Fixation of annual subscriptions12:30–13:30 Lunch break13:30–15:30 10. Consideration and adoption of the proposed

Rules changes11. Consideration and adoption of reports12. Announcement of the place and date of the next

Ordinary General Meeting13. Any other business raised by a Member, of

which notice in writing has been received by the Secretary General at least two months prior to the date of the General Meeting

14. Any other business raised by consent of the Executive Committee

15:30–16:00 Coffee break16:00–17:30 15. President’s closing address

16. Discharge of the Executive Committee17. Installation of new Officers18. Adjournment

30th ISTA Congress, Antalya, Turkey, 12–18 June 2013Online registration now open: www.seedtest.org/2013


Turkey, exotic, colourful, many-facet-ted, romantic, ever old and ever new, is

the gateway to the fabled east. Turkey is a country located at a point where the three continents of the old world, Asia, Africa and Europe, are closest to each other, and where Asia and Europe meet. Because of its geographical location, Anatolia has al-ways been important throughout history and is the birthplace of many great civiliza-tions. Turkey is not only a corridor through which the ancient Asian Turkish culture is transmitted to Europe, but is also regarded as a window of Western culture opening to meet Eastern culture.

Climate

The Mediterranean and Aegean shores of Turkey experience long, hot summers and mild, rainy winters. Istanbul averages 0 °C (32 °F) in January and 23 °C (73 °F) in July. Average annual precipitation totals 697 mm (27.4 in.), most of which falls in December and January. Along the central Anatolian plateau, a continental climate prevails, with hot summers and colder win-ters. The plateau receives only about half as much precipitation, but it is more evenly distributed throughout the year. The east-ern highlands experience even longer and colder winters. Along the Black Sea, the

climate is mild and rainy. Southeast Ana-tolia records the country’s highest summer temperatures, averaging more than 30 °C (86 °F) in July and August.

About Antalya

Antalya is also known as “the paradise on earth”, “the pearl of the Mediterrane-an”, and “the Turkish Riviera”.

It is the location of the most magnificent and best preserved ancient theatre in Asia and Africa, the Aspendos Theatre.

In addition to numerous archaeological cities and historic buildings, Antalya of-fers lots of waterfalls, caves and an endless beach.

According to a worldwide survey of cus-tomer satisfaction, conducted among 35 million people, 15 of the world’s top 100 hotels are in Antalya.

The world-class golf clubs of Antalya are among the favourites of internationally famous golfers.

The city was visited by Attalos, and sub-sequently by queens and emperors such as Cleopatra and Hadrian.

Thanks to the ancient statues on display, Antalya Museum is one of the world’s most important museums.

General information on Turkey and Antalya

Registration fees (online registration at www.seedtest.org/2013)

Periods Events EARLY registration(up to 15 March 2013)

LATE registration(16 March–15 May 2013)

ISTA Members12–18 June Congress incl. Symposium 540 € 590 €12–17 June Symposium & TCOM meetings only 490 € 540 €Non-members12–18 June Congress incl. Symposium 810 € 970 €12–17 June Symposium & TCOM meetings only 735 € 880 €Students12–17 June Symposium & TCOM meetings only 175 € 175 €Accompanying persons12–18 June Social events, lunches etc. only 300 € 300 €Exhibitors (incl. 1 person)12–18 June Exhibition booth 3000 € 3000 €

İstanbul ●

● Ankara Purity and Germination Workshop (see p. 60)

● Antalya: 30th ISTA Congress

● İzmir Vigour Workshop (see p. 59)

Map of Turkey, showing Congress and workshop venues.

The Antalya clock tower.


The turquoise shores of Antalya com-bine ancient cities whispering tales of his-tory, myth and legend, met on either side by tranquil, emerald-green forests and the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean. This is the perfect choice for a vacation sur-rounded by sea, sun, sand and more. Along with a cultural heritage deeply rooted in history, Antalya’s coves and highlands of unique beauty, pristine beaches, comfort-able hotels and marinas, colourful enter-tainment venues, and art-filled festivals all make it a tourist destination that offers its guests endless possibilities. These include the pleasure of sunbathing from sunrise to sunset; the natural thrill of outdoor sports in the grip of mother nature; the excitement of discovering national parks

with their rich flora and fauna, ancient cities, and museums; the mystery of the mountains and the peaceful Mediterra-nean coves drawing you away; the romance of watching an opera outdoors under the stars at night; sampling the unique delica-cies of Turkish cuisine and enjoying the party scene. Meeting the hospitable people of Antalya is just another part of the pleas-ant holiday experience.

In June, average air temperatures in Antalya are 30–35 °C, and average sea tem-peratures 25–30 °C.

Flight information

Flight time from Istanbul to Antalya is 1 hour, with direct flights offered by Turkish

Airlines and other domestic carriers. In June, many direct charter flights are availa-ble from most major European cities. Turk-ish Airlines also offers easy connections to all passengers arriving in Istanbul from its other direct flight locations with Turkish Airlines or other Star Alliance Members. From the airport to the ISTA Congress venue, the Kervansaray Hotel Lara, the taxi fare is approximately 20 €/40 Turkish lira.

There are direct flights to and from Aalborg, Amsterdam, Astana, Baghdad, Basel/Mulhouse, Berlin, Bournemouth, Bremen, Brussels, Chelyabinsk, Cologne, Copenhagen, Donetsk, Dortmund, Dres-den, Düsseldorf, Eindhoven, Ekaterinburg, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Göteborg, Hamburg, Hanover, Helsinki, Karaganda, Kemerovo, Kiev, Liege, L’viv, Malmö, Manchester, Minsk, Munich, Newcastle, Nuremburg, Orenburg, Oslo, St Petersburg, Sarajevo, Stuttgart, Tel Aviv, Vienna, Warsaw and Zurich.

Visas

All participants are advised to check with the Turkish Consular Missions (where available) for visa requirements. Please check the Ministry of Foreign Affairs web site about details of visa requirements (www.mfa.gov.tr/visa-information-for-foreigners.en.mfa). A letter of invitation can be issued by the ISTA Secretariat to registered participants requiring a visa.

The harbour of Antalya.

The Düden waterfalls.


Medical facilities

In addition to the special precautions taken by the host authorities, medical fa-cilities available at the Hotel Kervansaray Lara will be at the disposal of the partici-pants. In case of need, please contact the relevant information desks.

Local time

Local time in Istanbul is UTC/GMT + 2 hours.

Working hours

Banks are open Monday to Friday from 08:30 until 12:00 or 12.30, depending on the bank, and from 13:30 until 17:00. How-ever, some banks continue to serve during lunch breaks.

Museums are generally open from Tues-day to Sunday from 9:30 until 17:00 or 17.30, and closed on Monday. Shops and bazaars are normally open from Monday to Saturday from 9:30 to 22:00, and closed all day on Sundays. However, shopping malls and stores on main streets are open all day, seven days a week. You can find res-taurants or cafes open at virtually any time of the day or night.

Official institutions and banks are closed on Saturday and Sunday.

Currency and foreign exchange

On 1 January 2009, the monetary unit in Turkey was changed to the Turkish lira (TL or TRY), which comes in bank notes of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 TL. Smaller denominations come in coins of 1 TL and 50, 25, 10, 5 and 1 kuruş (kr.). 1 lira equals 100 kuruş. The exchange rates are around 1 US dollar = 1.82 TL, and 1 euro = 2.35 TL.

The most recent exchange rate values may be accessed at the web site of the Cen-tral Bank of the Republic of Turkey (www.tcmb.gov.tr/yeni/eng).

Convertible foreign currency can be exchanged at the airport, hotels and ex-change offices, as well as at all banks, in accordance with the daily announced ex-change rates.

In Turkey, travellers’ checks are rarely accepted. We recommend that you cash your travellers’ checks at the banks.

ATMs can be found in even the smallest Turkish towns. Most accept international credit cards or bank cards (a strip of logos is usually displayed above the ATM). Al-most all ATMs have a language key to en-able you to read the instructions in English.

The theatre of Aspendos.

Hadrian’s Gate, Antalya.


Value-added tax

Value-added tax (VAT), in Turkey called KDV, is 18%. VAT is usually included in quoted prices. Certain shops are author-ized to refund the tax.

Credit cards

International credit cards are widely used. Major credit cards (American Ex-press, Visa, Diner’s Club, MasterCard, Ac-cess, JCB, Eurocard etc.) are accepted in most establishments. Most ATMs accept international credit or bank cards.

Electricity supply

The electrical current in Turkey is 220 volts, 50 cycles alternating current (AC). Wall outlets take Continental-style plugs with two round prongs.

Communication

Turkey has a highly sophisticated com-munication system. In addition to the usual postal and telephone services, GSM telephones can be used through interna-tional roaming agreements. Please contact your GSM operator for more information. It is possible to use most cellular phones in Turkey.

Public telephones have two different sys-tems. Some of them work with cards while others work with tokens. Cards and tokens are both sold in post offices and tobacco shops. For international calls it is advisable to purchase cards.

All over Turkey, phone numbers consist of two sections: the 3-digit area code, and the 7-digit number. Calls within an area require only the 7-digit number. Calls to a different require 0 + area code + 7-digit number. International calls require 00 + country code + area code + number.

Accommodation

*All prices include VAT.

Kervansaray Hotel Lara (Congress venue)Location: Lara Single room: 129.00 €Double room: 175.00 €

Kervansaray Hotel Kundu Location: KunduSingle room: 129.00 €Double room: 175.00 €

Titanic Beach Resort Hotel Location: Lara Single room: 175.00 €Double room: 235.00 €

Miracle Hotel Location: Lara Single room: 180.00 €Double room: 240.00 €

Falez Hotel Location: Konyaalti Single room: 80.00 €Double room: 130.00 €

Lara Hotel Location: Lara Single room: 60.00 €Double room: 80.00 €

Bilem Hotel (boutique hotel)Location: Lara Single room: 60.00 €Double room: 80.00 €

Congress venue: Kervansaray Hotel Lara Convention Center and Spa

With its post-modern design and a glass facade covering 65 000 m2, the Kervan-saray Lara Hotel Convention Center and Spa stands in 110 000 m2 of grounds on the heavenly Lara Beach.

The hotel’s 3309 m2 convention center consists of an auditorium for 2000 people, 15 different meeting halls, a 1425 m2 lobby and the latest technological facilities, offer-ing an excellent service for both vacations

Congress venue: the Kervansaray Hotel Lara.


and meetings. The Kervansaray Hotel Lara is 10 km from Antalya International Air-port, and it is the venue of the 30th ISTA Congress 2013.

Contact:Lara Turizm Merkezi Antalya Türkiye+90 242 352 20 00+90 242 352 20 32www.kervansarayhotels.com.tr

Social programme

Post-Congress tours (19–21 June 2013)

Istanbul (2 nights, 3 days tour)İzmir (2 nights, 3 days tour)Kapadokya (2 nights, 3 days tour)Antalya (2 nights, 3 days tour)Tour prices:

Up to 15 March 2013: 750 € 16 March–15 May 2013: 900 €

For details, see http://ista2013antalya.org/social.php

Accompanying persons programme (12, 14, 16 June)

12 June: Perge – Aspendos – Düden tour with boat trip

09:30 Departure from the Hotel10:00–13:00 Perge – Aspendos – Düden13:30–18:30: Boat trip with lunch19:30: Return to Hotel

14 June: Side – Manavgat tour09:30: Departure from the Hotel11:00–12:30: Kemer13:00–14:30: Lunch15:00–18:00: Side – Manavgat19:30: Return to Hotel

16 June: Alanya tour with boat trip09:30: Departure from the Hotel11:30–13:30: Alanya14:00–18:00: Boat trip with lunch20:00: Return to Hotel

Tour prices: Bookings up to 15 March 2013: 75 € Bookings 16 March–15 May 2013: 90 €

VAT is included in all prices.

Cancellations

Up to 15 March 2013: full refund (exclud-ing bank charges).Between 15 March and 30 April 30, 2013: 50% refund (excluding bank charges).After 30 April 2013: no refund.All refunds will be made after the Congress.

To book any of the above tours, please contact:Flap Tour441. CADDE No: 106610 Birlik-Çankaya – AnkaraTurkeyPhone: (+90) 312 454 0000Fax: (+90) 312 454 0001Web: www.flaptour.com.trMail: [email protected]

The Temple of Apollo, Side.


ISTA Seed Symposium 2013 Antalya, Turkey, 12–14 June 2013

Alison A. Powell ISTA Executive Committee Member, ISTA Seed Vigour Committee Chair and Seed Symposium Convenor

Anyone interested in the origins and diversity of crop, ornamental and

wild plants will find Turkey a fascinating country. Two of Vavilov’s Centres of Ori-gin (i.e. Near Eastern and Mediterranean) extend into Turkey. This indicates that cen-tres of origin and diversity of several crop plants and many plant species lie within its borders.

Archaeological findings gathered from the large Neolithic settlement of Çatal-höyük, situated on the Konya Plain in Cen-tral Anatolia, have provided evidence for the domestication of both crops and ani-mals in this area as early as 7500 to 5700 BC. Wheat and barley have been identified there, along with peas, almonds, pistachios, and various fruits harvested from trees in the surrounding area. Sheep were domesti-cated and evidence also suggests the begin-ning of cattle domestication. The Konya Plain remains a major location for wheat production in Turkey. The archaeologi-cal investigations in Çatalhöyük continue today and many of the objects found can be seen in the world renowned Museum of Anatolian Civilisations in Ankara.

Genetic resources from Turkey have therefore played an important part in the development of agriculture. In addition, primitive land races, wild crop relatives and other wild plant species from Turkey con-tinue to provide new sources of important traits for varietal improvement to enhance agricultural production. They will also have contributed to the impressively wide range of crops grown in Turkey today. The conservation of these genetic resources for future use is a major concern and seeds provide a convenient means of their stor-age in ex situ gene banks established in many parts of the world

It was therefore appropriate to develop a theme for the 30th ISTA Seed Sympo-sium that related to the contribution that the diversity of species found in Turkey has made to plant breeding and the conserva-tion of that genetic diversity. Plant breed-ing plays a crucial role in the improvement of the traits found in our crop and orna-mental plants.

However, it is often forgotten that with-out attention to seed quality during pro-duction and storage of the seed, consum-ers may not appreciate the new traits due to the poor establishment and subsequent growth. Conservation in gene banks also requires careful consideration of the effects of collection of seed, drying and process-ing on seed quality, as well as the establish-ment of optimum conditions for long term seed storage.

Thus, the location of the 30th ISTA Con-gress and Seed Symposium in Turkey, led to the development of the theme for the Seed Symposium:

Evaluation of seed quality: a key step in ex-ploiting the benefits of plant breeding and genetic conservation

The ISTA Seed Symposium will cover a wide range of seed related topics, including:– Genetic conservation– Seed pathology– Habitat regeneration– Seed germination and dormancy– Seed quality and plant breeding– Application of molecular markers– Seed quality evaluation– Seed physiology and stress responses

The symposium will be made up of five oral sessions (see below), and two poster sessions, each of 2 hours, covering the same topics. Each oral session will be chaired by a lead speaker who is well known in the field of seed science and technology.

Session topics

Session 1: Role of quality evaluation in seed production

Multiplication of new cultivars; mainte-nance of genetic purity; environmental and maternal effects on quality; production and processing; conventional and organic seed production; epidemiology and model-ling; seed treatments.

Chair and Lead Speaker: Francisco Krzyz-anowski, EMBRAPA Soja, Brazil

Presentation title: The role of quality eval-uation in seed production as exemplified by soybean seed production.

To reach the standards of seed certifica-tion systems, several quality parameters should be followed: genetic and physical purities, physiological quality and seed health. Genetic purity is the basis to reach high cultivar quality in seed production. The fundamental steps to produce soybean breeder seed are the selection of typical plants of the required cultivar, threshing each plant individually, multiplication of plant per line and line per block, and ge-netic analysis of each generation based on seed morphological genetic descriptors. Nowadays, application of molecular mark-ers, originating from seed biotechnology, can be used alongside the above procedures to ensure genetic purity throughout seed production under the certification system. The use of measurements of physiological quality (germination and vigour) at several stages in seed production will be illustrated by reference to soybean seed production in Brazil. Categories of tetrazolium staining (TZ) have been developed to indicate seed vigour as well as germination. Experience in the use of TZ to monitor and maintain quality during harvesting, drying, process-ing, storage and delivery will be described. Seed health is assured through seed pathol-ogy tests, such as the blotter test, which,

School of Biological SciencesUniversity of AberdeenAberdeen, AB24 3UU, [email protected]


along with the results of the tetrazolium test offers a complete diagnosis of soy-bean seed quality, supporting the correct decision for seed treatment. High vigour, healthy and genetically pure soybean seeds produce seedlings and plants of high ag-ronomic performance which can result in productivity increases. The considerations above lead us to understand how seed sci-ence and seed technology are closely linked and underline the importance of the scien-tific work within ISTA for quality evalua-tion in seed production.

Session 2: Seed storage for commercial use and genetic conservation

Seed collection and handling effects on germination and longevity; seed moisture content and water activity; storage condi-tions in relation to quality; orthodox and recalcitrant seeds, identification of quality traits in non-crop species.

Chair and Lead Speaker: Robin Probert, Millennium Seed Bank, RBG Kew, UK

Presentation title: Pre-storage factors criti-cally affect the quality of seeds for storage and use: a review of the underlying biology and practical implications

Orthodox seed storage behaviour is an ac-quired trait. Immature seeds, on their way to becoming ‘orthodox’, are in fact ‘recal-citrant’ because drying at this early stage in seed development is lethal. The ability of seeds to withstand drying is acquired around the time of mass maturity in most species but resistance to ageing (seed lon-gevity) is acquired after this and for most species peaks around the time of natural dispersal. However, the exact timing of the acquisition of seed quality traits var-ies across plant species and this poses sig-nificant challenges for effective harvesting, processing and storage, particularly for non-crop species. Uniform seed ripening, resistance to shattering and reduction of seed moisture content to ambient levels on

the plant is peculiar to highly bred cereal crops. Variation in flowering times result-ing in considerable developmental vari-ation in seeds and fruits and seed disper-sal at high moisture levels is the norm for some crops and the vast majority of non-crop species. The commercial production of high quality, native wildflower seeds for habitat creation and landscape-scale resto-ration projects, is particularly challenging. To maximise yield, seeds are often har-vested or collected for conservation before they have reached peak maturity and this practice will compromise storage potential unless appropriate post-harvest handling techniques are used. This presentation will describe recent research that has elucidated the patterns of acquisition of seed quality traits in a range of non-crop species. Post-harvest handling methods that ensure that seed storage potential is maximised will be highlighted.

(The co-author of this paper is Fiona Hay, T.T. Chang Genetic Resources Cent-er, International Rice Research Institute, the Philippines)

Session 3 (ISSS collaborative session): Physiological, biochemical and molecular markers of seed quality

Stress and desiccation tolerance, genom-ics, proteomics, development and matura-tion, regulation and induction of dorman-cy, germination; seed longevity; disease resistance.

Chair and Lead Speaker: Françoise Cor-bineau, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, Paris, France

Presentation title: Markers of seed qual-ity: from a physiological to a molecular approach

Seed quality results from the functioning of the genome but is also largely regulated by numerous factors intervening through-out the seed life, from its development on the mother plant up to sowing, including

storage. Methods of evaluation of seed quality providing accurate prediction of seed performance under field conditions are then needed by the seed industry. Various physiological tests, i.e. germination tests in suboptimal conditions of temperature, oxygenation and water potential of the me-dium, or accelerated ageing and controlled deterioration allow sensitive differentia-tion between seed lots. However, a better understanding of the biochemical, cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the acquisition of seed vigor during seed devel-opment, in the germination process, and in seed ageing allow various new markers of seed quality to be suggested. Among them, electrolyte leakage, ethylene or ethanol pro-duction during imbibition, cell cycle mark-ers, soluble sugar metabolism (in particu-lar, the raffinose family oligosaccharides), specific proteins (11S globulin B-subunit, biotinylated proteins, heat-shock protein) and the efficiency of the Reactive Oxygen Species scavenging through antioxidant defense system (e.g. catalase activity), seem to be promising. Use of global approaches such as transcriptomics, proteomics or me-tabolomics could result in identification of other markers, and seed quality evalu-ation would also benefit from non-invasive techniques such as X-ray, thermography, imaging system, etc. However, among all the markers suggested, for a seed company, methods must be fast and easy to perform in routine testing, and be applicable to dif-ferent batches of the same species.

Session 4: Advanced methods in seed quality evaluation

Automatic and computer based methods; image analysis; DNA-based methods; va-riety identification; purity analysis; seed pathology; germination.

Chair and Lead Speaker: Beni Kaufman, Pioneer, USA

Presentation title: Next generation seed quality testing


Seed quality is defined and measured along a number of axes: is the seed of the right variety (varietal ID tests)? Is it genetically pure (genetic purity tests)? Does it contain the right traits (trait purity tests), with no adventitious presence of unintended GM seed (AP/GMO tests)? Is it physi-cally pure, free from debris or inert matter (purity tests)? Is the seed intact and free from disease and pathogens (various seed health tests); is the seed vigorous (cold test, accelerated aging test) and how well will it germinate (warm test, tetrazolium test)? The way we define seed quality is not likely to change soon; however, the meth-ods we test it by are evolving constantly. In this presentation, some of the new and emerging technologies will be presented, these include, DNA based methods such as highly multiplexed polymerase chain reac-tion (PCR), isothermal amplifications and next generation sequencing; various physi-ological measurements using advanced digital methodologies and small molecule monitoring. The pro and cons of the new methods will be discussed and their utility to measure the different seed quality pa-rameters will be compared to the present day practices.

Session 5: Evaluation and improvement of physiological quality

Evaluation of germination and vigour; seed quality in relation to field establishment, transplant production, land reclamation/regeneration; response to stress (e.g. patho-gens, drought, salinity, soil contaminants).

Chair and Lead Speaker: Alison Powell, University of Aberdeen, UK

Presentation title: Electrical conductivity measurements of solute leakage: past and current use and their future application for rapid assessment of germination and vigour.

Leakage of solutes from seed during im-bibition, measured using electrical con-

duc tiv ity of seed soak water, has played an important role in both research into seed physiology and in seed testing. In physiology, conductivity measurements have frequently been used to provide sup-port for hypotheses of membrane changes during imbibition, physical damage to membranes and membrane deterioration during storage. The evidence for changes in membrane structure and composition that may result in changes in membrane integrity and hence solute leakage from seeds will be re-examined. Changes in leak-age will be shown to be associated primar-ily with dead, not living, tissue, and the role of membrane integrity in living cells questioned. In seed testing, the electrical conductivity test identifies differences in vigour amongst seed lots of grain legumes, high leakage being linked to low vigour. There have also been reports over a num-ber of years in which differences in solute leakage, either from bulk seed samples or single seeds, have been linked with germi-nation in a number of species. The suitabil-ity of the conductivity test for species of mono- and dicotyledons will be discussed in relation to seed morphology. This will lead to a discussion of the importance of dead tissue in determining solute leakage and vigour in grain legumes, and of dead seeds in predicting the germination of small dicotyledonous species on the basis of solute leakage. Finally, the future pros-pects for application of conductivity meas-urements as a rapid method of determin-ing germination and vigour, in commercial seed production and to support the realisa-tion of plant breeding programmes, will be considered.

Poster sessions

Chair: Hülya İlbi, Ege University, İzmir, Turkey

Posters will be presented on topics from all the above oral sessions.

Information for authors of submitted abstracts

Deadlines: Abstracts for papers have now been submitted and are being reviewed by the symposium convenor and a small scien-tific committee. Authors of papers consid-ered for oral presentation will be contacted in November for further information on experimental results, additional to the abstract.5 November 2012: Authors informed

whether papers submitted for poster presentation have been accepted.

10 December 2012: Authors informed whether papers have been accepted for oral presentation. Authors of papers not accepted for oral presentation will be invited to present their work as a poster.

8 February 2013: Deadline for payment of registration

fee by authors of accepted oral papers. If the presenter of an oral paper has not registered, the paper will be replaced in the programme.

Deadline for acceptance of an invitation to present an offered oral paper as a poster

8 March 2013: Deadline for payment of registration fee by authors of accepted poster papers. If none of the poster authors has registered by this time, it will not be possible to present the poster and the abstract will not be published.

Funding: Authors of proposed papers are encouraged to explore possible sources of funding for their attendance at the symposium as early as possible. ISTA cannot offer any financial support to authors of papers. However, a letter of acceptance of a paper for oral pres-entation (subject to funding) can be provided to assist in funding applica-tions from early December 2012; letters of acceptance of poster papers can be provided on request from early Novem-ber 2012.


How to become an ISTA Voting Delegate at the Ordinary General Meeting

Michael Muschick ISTA Secretary General

Within ISTA, all decision-making power lies in the hands of the Gov-

ernments (Article 12 Voting (a), The Ar-ticles of the ISTA).

It is up to each Government to decide whether it wants to exercise its voting rights.

This governmental decision has no influ-ence on the decision of a laboratory or a person to become a Member of the Asso-ciation, to use the services provided by the Association or to participate in the work of the Association.

If a Government wishes to exercise its voting rights within ISTA, the Govern-ment needs to: – nominate a Designated Authority repre-

senting the Government of the country and supply this information (contact de-tails) to the ISTA Secretariat;

– ensure that at least one seed-testing ex-pert in the country is an ISTA Personal Member;

– designate at least one Personal Member to represent that Government in the af-fairs of the Association (designated Per-sonal Members are referred to as ‘Desig-nated Members’);

– nominate one Designated Member to ex-ercise the voting rights on behalf of that Government for each ISTA Ordinary General Meeting.


In other words, Personal Members wishing to exercise voting rights on behalf of their Governments at the Ordinary General Meeting need to:– become a Designated Member;– have a nomination by their Government

to exercise the voting rights on behalf of their Government at that particular Or-dinary General Meeting.

How to become a Personal Member

A person wanting to become a Personal Member of ISTA needs to apply for per-sonal membership (or, in conjunction with a laboratory, apply for laboratory mem-bership, as the laboratory representative is also considered a Personal Member of the Association).

The appropriate application forms can be obtained from the ISTA Secretariat, or downloaded from the ISTA web site. The Executive Committee will decide on your application to become a Personal Member.

How to become a Designated Member

Designated Members are Personal Mem-bers of the Association who have been nominated by their Designated Authority to represent those Governments in the af-fairs of ISTA.

The appropriate submission form can be obtained from the ISTA Secretariat, or downloaded from the ISTA web site, and the ISTA Secretariat can assist Per-sonal Members with the information on the relevant governmental authority (= Designa ted Authority) in their coun-try which has the authority to designate

Personal Members as Designated Mem-bers. The designation process for becoming a Designated Member is a country-specific procedure, in which ISTA bodies are not involved.

How to be nominated as a Voting Delegate

At the beginning of each calendar year, the ISTA Secretariat sends out letters to each Designated Authority, asking them to nominate one Designated Member to exercise the voting rights at the Ordinary General Meeting for that year.

From the nominations (of Designated Members) received from the Designated Authorities, the Secretariat then generates the roll call for the Ordinary General Meet-ing (list of names of Designated Members who were nominated by their Designated Authority to vote at the Ordinary General Meeting on behalf of their Governments). These Designated Members are then re-ferred to as Voting Delegates.

If a Designated Authority does not give any indication as to who should execute the voting rights, a Designated Member wishing to exercise the voting rights for his country must provide a letter from his Des-ignated Authority which indicates that he has been nominated as Voting Delegate for that meeting. This letter must be submit-ted to the ISTA Secretary General at least 24 hours before the start of the Ordinary General Meeting.

Before the Ordinary General Meeting, the nominated Voting Delegates must col-lect their voting cards at the announced ISTA Secretariat desk. The voting rights can then be exercised on behalf of that Government.



The main aim of this article is to start ISTA colleagues thinking seriously

about who they would like to see on the Ex-ecutive Committee (ECOM) and who they want as the next Vice-President, well ahead of the time that decisions will be made at the June 2013 meeting. In addition there are the ISTA Technical Committees that need members.

June 2013 is an important date for ISTA committees as it is the end of one three-year work period and the start of the next. One of these committees is the ECOM. The election of ECOM members for 2013 to 2016 and election of the new Vice-President of ISTA will take place at the ISTA Congress in Antalya. The Vice-President is elected for 2013-2016 and then automatically becomes the ISTA President for 2016-2019.

Our current Vice-President is also our acting President, Joël Léchappé, and he will take up his own Presidency in June 2013 for the period 2013 to 2016. Joël will need the help and support from an active Executive Committee that will be elected at the June 2013 meeting. If you want to be-come involved in ISTA at the ECOM level, now is the time to think about it.

Who is eligible to be elected as the ISTA Vice-President?

Any Designated Member from any country can be nominated by two Desig-nated Members at the June meeting, after which all Designated Members vote on the nominated candidates. Election is by a sim-ple majority.

Does the new Vice-President need to have served on the Executive Committee previously?

No, but it might be desirable if they had, although they will have three years to ‘learn’ about how the ECOM works before they become President. If there is more than one candidate for the position of Vice-President, then the past roles of a candidate within ISTA might be something that the voting members would consider before they cast their vote. Note: if there is only one candidate for election as Vice-President the vote is unnecessary.

For the Vice-President, it is a six-year commitment to ISTA for both the person and their country. There is currently no fi-nancial support from ISTA for any mem-bers of the ECOM to attend meetings, or for payment of the registration fees for ISTA meetings. All the work on the ECOM is voluntary. The only funding that ECOM members receive is when ECOM members are requested to travel to officially repre-sent ISTA at a meeting, and then in some situations travel and expenses are paid for by ISTA rather than their own country.

Who is eligible to be elected as an Executive Committee ‘Member at Large’?

Any Designated Member from any country can be nominated by two Desig-nated Members at the June meeting, after which all the designated voting members vote on the nominated candidates. A total of eight ECOM ‘Members at Large’ are elected. The organiser of the next ISTA Congress in 2016 is automatically the ninth ECOM member.

What does the work of the Vice-President or an ECOM member involve?

About eight days of face-to-face meet-ings per year, three days around the Or-dinary General Meeting and a separate 5- or 6-day meeting (usually in Zurich) in February of each year. Members also reply to e-mails in between meetings, on average

one a week. In addition, ECOM Working Groups are formed, made up of ECOM members who wish to contribute to the work of that group, for example the Man-agement and Finances or International Representation Working Groups. Each ECOM member also acts as an ECOM liaison link to one of the ISTA Technical Committees.

ISTA is by nature an international or-ganisation and ideally wants to have rep-resentatives from all regions of the world, on both the ECOM and Technical Com-mittees. However, the official language of ISTA is English, therefore a good compre-hension of English is desirable for ECOM members. Even so, ECOM membership can also be a chance to practise and im-prove your English to the next level within a friendly environment.

I have served on the ECOM of ISTA as a ‘Member at Large’ (2004-2006, 2010-2013) and also as an ex-officio member (2006-2010). I have made some very good friends as part of the work, from all regions of the world, and learnt a lot about myself and different management styles and practises. Some of the colleagues I have worked with will not be able to continue on the ECOM after 2013, so there will be existing ECOM members not standing for re-election. Equally, every three years is an opportu-nity for change and renewal within the ECOM, even if colleagues were not plan-ning to stand-down.

I volunteered to write this article be-cause as Rules Chair since 2000 many of you know me and you are used to me pre-senting things for a vote. I have also found from my role as Rules Chair that the more we can prepare in advance and have all dis-cussed openly the better. Also, one of the ECOM working groups that I have been involved with is the Management and Fi-nances of ISTA, and for me it is extremely important that we have people on the new ECOM willing and able to participate in this on-going challenge to ISTA.

Time to get involved in ISTA Committees?Steve Jones

Member, ISTA Executive Committee and Chair, ISTA Rules Committee

Canadian Food Inspection AgencySaskatoon LaboratoryS7N 4L8 Saskatoon, [email protected]


ASSOCIATION NEWS

What do you need to do next?Action 1: talk with your ISTA colleagues

in your laboratory and country and decide whether you would like to become involved in ISTA at the ECOM level .

Action 2: if you are interested in serving on the ISTA ECOM as a member or as the Vice-President for the period 2013 to 2016, notify Joël ([email protected]) before the 1st February 2013 ready for discussion at the 2013 ECOM meeting,

Action 3: make sure that you are desig-nated as a Designated Member by your

country’s ISTA Designated Authority. Note: there can be more than one Desig-nated Member per country, but only one Designated Member can vote in June. To be a Designated Member you need to be a Personal Member or laboratory-linked Personal Member of ISTA. Associate Members are not eligible to be elected to the ISTA ECOM.

Action for ISTA: Depending on how many applications we receive in advance, we will present profiles of candidates in the April 2013 issue of STI, ready for elections

and voting at the June meeting. Candidates can still be nominated at the June 2013 meeting, but in future years ISTA may consider voting for the ECOM prior to the June meeting, just one of the issues for the new ECOM to work on!

If the Executive Committee is not for you, ISTA’s Technical Committees also need members. Get in contact with the cur-rent Technical Committee Chairs, who are all listed on the ISTA web site, if you are interested.�

The announcement of the Exhibition

In 1875 in Graz, Styria, Austria, the 1st Meeting of the Directors of Seed Testing Stations was held on 20 and 21 September, in conjunction with the 48th Meeting of the Society of German Researchers and Physicians (18–24 September) (Steiner, Kruse and Leist, 2011). At the same time, from 18–22 September, there was also held a four-day Exhibition of Machines and Equipment for Seed Cleaning.

In spite of the fact that it was not an-nounced in Germany until July (Anon., 1875a) and in Austria until August (Anon., 1875b), the exhibition was a great success, thanks to the competence of the three re-nowned organizers.

The first of these was Prof. Dr. Gus-tav Wilhelm, Professor for Agronomy at the Styrian Agricultural-Technical High School Joanneum in Graz, Member of the Central Board of the Imperial and Royal Styrian Agricultural Society and also well known as a pioneer and itinerant teacher in higher education. Prof. Wilhelm had

The Exhibition of Machines and Equipment for Seed Cleaning in Graz, 1875

A.M. Steiner1, M. Kruse2 and N. Leist3 1 ISTA Alumnus; 2 ISTA Personal Member; 3 ISTA Past President and Honorary Life Member

University of Hohenheim and LTZ Augustenberg-Karlsruhe, [email protected]@[email protected]

studied agronomy at the Agricultural Academy at Hohenheim (Stuttgart, Ger-many), which in those days was the fore-most institution of its kind in Europe.

The second was Imperial Councillor Friedrich Müller, General Secretary of the Imperial and Royal Styrian Agricul-tural Society, and the third was the expert machinery dealer Mr. J. Smetan, in Graz, Griesgasse 34.

The announcement specified that the exhibition should present machines and equipment for:1. threshing and cleaning clover seeds;2. threshing and cleaning grass seeds;3. threshing, cleaning and grading cereal

seeds.Applications for admission were to be

sent to the Office of the Imperial and Royal Styrian Agricultural Society, or to Prof. Dr. Friedrich Nobbe in Tharand, near Dresden (Saxony, Germany), showing:a) name and address of the manufacturer;b) number and kind of machines;c) required space;d) mode of power, i. e. by hand or animal

powered;e) retail price;f) information on whether a company

representative would be attending.The costs for shipping and returning

were to be carried by the applicant. Ad-mission was free. Security, insurance and seed lots for testing were provided by the

Imperial and Royal Styrian Agricultural Society, which also organized exemption from customs duty and specially reduced freight rates by rail transport. The site of the Exhibition was the gymnasium of the Agricultural-Technical High School in Graz.

The display of machines and equipment

The exhibition was reviewed by Wilhelm (1875).

His first report described a clover con-ditioning machine of Julius Carow & Co., Prague, consisting of a huller, a ventilator and a set of sieves. Hulling was accom-plished by passing the precleaned seed through a feed hopper onto two pairs of cylinders, one above the other. Of each pair of cylinders, one was of grooved steel, the other covered by rubber, with the cyl-inders rotating at different speeds. Subse-quently, an airstream, in combination with two screens, separated the clover seeds into two containers, one with the fraction of smaller seeds, the other with the fraction of upgraded larger seeds. This expensive machine was animal powered, and had an hourly output of 20–34 kg. It was recom-mended only for specialized seed producers and co-operatives.


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In Styria at that time, about 600 t of red clover seeds were produced yearly on an area of some 6000 ha.

Two hand sieves of brass wire, with dif-ferent mesh sizes for separating clover seeds, were exhibited by Ferdinand Jer-gitsch, Klagenfurt (Carinthia, Austria), and two similar hand sieves of iron wire by J. Dominick, Schweidnitz (Silesia, Ger-many; now Swidnica, Poland). A neat lit-tle inexpensive clover-cleaning machine was presented by Mayer & Co. from Kalk near Deutz (Rhineland, Germany). In this machine, the seeds fell from a feed hopper into an inclined rotating cylinder of zinc plate with oblong holes, where the seeds were constantly mixed. Compared to a flat-screen separation, this cylinder screen separation was much more efficient, in par-ticular when separating ribwort seeds. The hourly output was approximately 25 kg.

For the conditioning of clover seeds there were improved air screen separators, as displayed by Clayton and Shuttleworth, Lincoln (England), John Baker, Wisbech (England) and Kühne, Wieselburg (Lower Austria). The “Dresdner Cereal Cleaning and Sorting Machine” of Schubart and Hesse, Dresden, was in widespread use and enjoyed a notable reputation, not least for its all-round capability (Figure 1). This ma-chine was delivered with a set of 12 screens, from which three suitable screens were se-lected and fitted for any specific cleaning process.

Another kind of machine were the trieurs or indented cylinder separators, mostly used to separate the round seeds of corn cockle, cleaver and vetches from the oblong seeds of cereals. The separa-tion principle needs no further explanation here. On display were both single-action machines, with one size of indents along the full length of the cylinder, and double-action machines, with two different indent sizes in a cylinder with two segments. These medium-priced machines were flexible and could be adapted to solve specific prob-lems. Depending on the size of the ma-chine, the hourly output of cereal seeds was between 100 to 350 kg. Exhibitors were Lhuillier, Dijon (Côte-d’Or, France; Figure 2), Pernollet (Paris), Mayer & Co., and Harter-Ainé, Bar-sur-Aube (Aube, France). The single-action machines were considered satisfactory for agricultural seeds, while the double-action machines

Figure 1. The Dresdner Cereal Cleaning and Sorting Machine of Schubart and Hesse, Dresden (Saxony, Germany); from Nobbe, 1876.

Figure 2. Indented cylinder separator of Lhuillier, Dijon (Côte-d‘Or, France); from Nobbe, 1876.

were recommended for industrial purposes such as malting. The accurate separation of corn cockle seeds was crucial because of their high toxicity in animal feed, and their uselessness in the distilling of spirits.

Finally, there was a gravity separator for cereals by Hignette (Paris), with a tri-angular oscillating deck with partitions

rendering very clean and uniform seeds (Figure 3). In smaller types, the deck was shaken directly by hand (see Figure 3), in larger types by a hand-operated crank with a gear drive transmission to produce the oscillating motion of the deck. The larger cleaning machines needed at least two, usu-ally three, and in certain cases four persons


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to set up the machine for the various clean-ing tasks, and to operate and control the cleaning process.

In addition to the exhibition of machin-ery, Nobbe demonstrated dynamic spears such as Nobbe triers in different sizes, and different types of walking sticks for sam-pling seed lots. They were manufactured and supplied by master tinsmith Mathes from Tharand. A highly valuable exhibit was a comprehensive collection of weed seeds on four display boards by Dr. Kohler, Reutlingen (Württemberg).

On 21 September 1875, at 12:30, the participants of the First Meeting of Di-rectors of Seed Testing Stations and other interested parties (Steiner, Kruse and Leist 2011) gathered to visit the Exhibition for demonstrations and to test the functions and production efficiency of the cleaning machines on display.

Concluding remarks

Altogether, 13 manufacturers had seed cleaning machines on display. Three showed flat-screen and cylinder screen separation equipment, five air screen sep-aration systems, four indented cylinder separators and one a gravity separator. The exhibition of triers and the seed col-lection provided an attractive complement to the event. The manufacturers came from Austria, Bohemia, France, Germany and Great Britain. In view of the considerable number and different kinds of machines, as well as their places of manufacture, this exhibition of 1875 can well be considered a highly respectable international exhibi-tion, even when compared with the World’s Fairs of 1873 in Vienna and 1889 in Paris.

Friedrich Nobbe, who for 35 years had been in the forefront of seed science and technology, never saw seed testing as an activity by itself, but always intercon-nected with organizational requirements, economic demands, seed business inter-ests, consumer interests, advisory services, research and public welfare (Steiner, 1994, 2004; Steiner et al., 2011). The combina-tion of the First Meeting of the Directors of Seed Testing Stations and of the Exhibi-tion of Machines and Equipment for Seed Cleaning in Graz in 1875 is a convincing demonstration of this attitude, which was fortunately common in those days of en-thusiastic pioneering seed production and seed quality testing.

Figure 3. The gravity separator of Josse, Ormesson-sur-Marne (now Val-de-Marne, France) as exhibited by Hignette (Paris, France); from Nobbe, 1876.

Acknowledgement

This paper is dedicated to our dear col-league Dr. Hans Fuchs, former Head of the Seed Testing Laboratory Munich/Freising-Weihenstephan, ISTA Alumnus, and for many years a member of the ISTA Equipment Committee and the ISTA Vig-our Committee, on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

ReferencesAnonymous (1875a). Ausstellung von Maschin-

en und Geräthen zur Samen-Reinigung in Graz. Landwirtschaftliche Versuchs-Stationen 18, 403–404.

Anonymous (1875b). Ausstellung von Maschin-en und Geräthen zur Samenreinigung in Graz. Der steirische Landbote 8, 129–130.

Nobbe, F. (1876). Handbuch der Samenkunde. Verlag von Wiegand, Hempel und Parey, Berlin.

Steiner, A. M. (1994). 125 years of seed testing: Johann Christian Friedrich Nobbe, founder of seed testing and far-seeing pioneer. ISTA News Bulletin 107, 24–25.

Steiner, A. M. (2004). Nobbe, Johann Chris-tian Friedrich, Pflanzenphysiologe. In: Biographisches Lexikon zur Geschichte der Pflanzenzüchtung (ed. G. Röbbelen), 3. Folge, 142–143. Göttingen.

Steiner A. M., Kruse M. and Leist, N. (2011). The First Meeting of the Directors of Seed Testing Stations in Graz, 1875. Seed Testing International, 142, 29–32.

Wilhelm, G. (1875). Die Ausstellung von Maschinen zur Samen-Reinigung in Graz. Der steirische Landbote 8, 154–155, 163–164.�


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New Member LaboratoriesArgentina ARML0400/ARML0401Laboratory representative: Rita del Valle AraozLaboratorio Regional Pampeana Sur de Anali-sis de Semillas I.N.A.S.E.Oficina Regional Pampeana SurDonado 1020 F57, Bahia BlancaBuenos Aires, 8000Phone: +54 291 4522132Fax: +54 291 4522132E-mail: [email protected]

Serbia YUML0400/YUML00401Laboratory representative: Milenko BojicPSS Poljoprivrednastanica dooLaboratory for Quality and Seed TestingDepartment of Quality AssuranceTemerinska 131Novi Sad, 21000Phone: +381 21 4780220Fax: +381 21 6412 180E-mail: [email protected]

New Personal and Associate MembersAustralia AUAM0005Sally NortonAustralian Tropical Crops Genetic Resource Centre, Department of Employment Economic Development & InnovationLocked Mail Bag 1Biloela, QLD 4715Phone: +61 7 49 92 91 30Fax: +61 7 49 92 34 68E-mail: [email protected]

AUAM0006Louise LarrieuThe Diggers Club, Seed DepartmentP.O. Box 300Dromana, VIC 3936Phone: +61 3 59 84 79 30E-mail: [email protected]

India INAM0005Alok AdholeyaThe Energy And Resources InstituteBiotechnology and Bioresources DivisionDarbari seth Block, Indian Habitat CenterLodhi RoadNew Delhi, 11003Phone: +91 98 1162 8889Fax: +91 11 2468 2144, 2468 2145E-mail: [email protected]

Philippines PHDM0002Ruel C. GesmundoNational Seed Quality Control ServicesBureau of Plant Industry692 San Andres Street, Malate1004 ManilaPhone: +63 2 525 7909Fax: +63 2 5217650E-mail: [email protected]

Spain ESAM0002Henriette BakkerAstec-GlobalC/ Canigo 4208480 L’Ametlla del VallèsPhone: + 34 93 843 14 53E-mail: [email protected]

Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu TWDM0002Mei-Hua HuangAgriculture and Food AgencyCouncil of Agriculture, Executive Yuan8 Kuan-Hwa Road, Chung-Hsing VillageNantou, 54044Phone: +886 49 2332380-1020Fax: +886 886 49 235 1706E-mail: [email protected]

United Kingdom GBAM0012Hail RihanUniversity of PlymouthFaculty of Science and Technology409 Portland Square BuildingPlymouth PL14 5GBPhone: +44 7513 724273E-mail: [email protected]

United States of America USAM0020Rong GuoBayer Crop Science, Regulatory Science3500 Paramount ParkwayMorrisville, NC 27560Phone: +1 919 461 6662E-mail: [email protected]

USAM0021Raymond ShillitoBayer Crop Science, Regulatory Science3500 Paramount ParkwayMorrisville, NC 27560Phone: +1 919 461 6566E-mail: [email protected]

Laboratory membership cancellationsCanada CAML1100/CAML1102Laboratory representative: Alexandra CristeaSGS Canada Inc.Agricultural Services Seed Laboratory103–138 Portage Ave EastWinnipeg, MB R3C 0A1Phone: +1 204 257 2299E-mail: [email protected]

China CNML0200/CNML0201Laboratory representative: Shiming LinInsp. and Quar. Tech. CtrXiamen Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau31 Jinding Road, DongduFujian ProvinceXiamen City, 361012Phone: +86 592 567 5828E-mail: [email protected]

CNML0300/CNML0301Laboratory representative: Weijun DuanNingbo Insp. and Quar. Bureau Technical Center of P.R.C.9 Mayuan Road, Halshu DistrictNingbo, 315012Phone: +86 574 8702 2860E-mail: [email protected]

Denmark DKML0500/DKML0501Laboratory representative: Bente Lydal JorgensenDLF-Trifolium A/SFåborgvej 2485250 OdensePhone: +45 63 171623E-mail: [email protected]

INML1700/INML1701Laboratory representative: Aswath GopinathSyngenta India Ltd.c/o Rajjamma Agri Pvt LtdNo. 660/661, Nutankal VillageMedchal Mandal, Ranga Reddy DistrictAndhra Pradesh, 501401Phone: +91 8418 304525E-mail: [email protected]

ISTA membership changesStatus 1 September 2012


ASSOCIATION NEWS

ISTA membership changes

Italy ITML0500/ITML0501Laboratory representative: Serena LamastraSeed Bank CODRA Med srl.Centro Operativo per la Difesa il Recupedo dell’AmbienteContrada Sciffra85010 Pignola (PZ)Phone: +390 971 486 231E-mail: [email protected]

Russian Federation RUDL0200/RUDL0201Laboratory representative: Galina FilipenkoThe N.I. Vavilov All-Russia Research Institute of Plant IndustryPlant Germplasm Conservation Laboratory42, Bolshaya Morskaya Str.St. Petersburg, 190000Phone: +7 812 3147714E-mail: [email protected]

Ukraine UAML0300/UAML0301Laboratory representative: Victor VolkodavScientific Innovation Centre SlovjanskyBox 168Kyiv, 03110Phone: +380 44 527 9883E-mail: [email protected]

Other membership cancellationsIsrael ILAM0003Raanan CohenKaiima Bio Agritech LtdHarimonim 10, P.O. Box 508Kfar Tavor, 15241Phone: +972 4 953 0148E-mail: [email protected]

India INAM0002Meena Kumari KVS KotaAcharya NG Ranga Agricultural UniversitySeed Research & Technology CentreRajendranagar, Hyderabad (AP)Hyderabad, 500 030Phone: +91 040 2401 5382E-mail: [email protected]

INAM0003Sambasiva Rao PalaparthiAcharya NG Ranga Agricultural UniversitySeed Research & Technology CentreRajendranagar, Hyderabad (AP)Hyderabad, 500 030Phone: +91 040 2401 5382E-mail: [email protected]

INAM0005Rajeswari BodduluriAcharya NG Ranga Agricultural UniversitySeed Research & Technology CentreRajendranagar, Hyderabad (AP)Hyderabad, 500 030Phone: +91 040 2401 5382E-mail: [email protected]

Italy ITPM0002Pietro CivaleSeed Bank CODRA Med srl.Centro Operativo per la Difesa il Recupedo dell’AmbienteContrada Sciffra85010 Pignola (PZ)Phone: +39 0 971 486 231E-mail: [email protected]

Philippines PHDM0002Henry T. CarpisoNational Seed Quality Control ServicesBureau of Plant Industry692 San Andres St., MalatePH-1000 ManilaPhone: +63 2 920 0968E-mail: [email protected]

Ukraine UAPM0001Frederic ChavignyUkrainian Laboratory of Quality and Safety of AIC ProductsNational University of Life and EnvironmentChervonozoryaniy Str., 96Kyiv, 03138Phone: +380 504472717E-mail: [email protected]

United Kingdom GBPM0011Guy Holmes-HendersonSyngenta Crop Protection ResearchJealotts Hill IRCBracknellBerkshire RG42 6EYPhone: +44 (0) 1344 414647E-mail: [email protected]

United States USAM0012Keting Chen005 Horticulture HallIowa State UniversityAmes, IA 50010Phone: +1 515 294 9940E-mail: [email protected]

Call for registration:17th ISTA GMO Proficiency Test on soya (see p. 58)


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The Seed Health Method Validation Programme requires that methods

approved as Official Methods should be reviewed every 5 years to ensure their continuing effectiveness and suitability. Official Seed Health Testing Methods are found in the International Rules for Seed Testing 2012, Annexe to Chapter 7, Seed Health Testing Methods. There are 8 ISTA Official Seed Health Testing Methods that were approved in 2002 (Table 1) and were therefore due for review in 2007. As part of the review process a questionnaire was sent to all ISTA Member Laboratories and a copy was posted on the ISTA web-site for other interested bodies to respond.

Twenty-three laboratories answered the 2007 method review questionnaire. Most laboratories stated that the methods were suitable for the purpose they were used for, however, several laboratories suggested further improvement (high priority) was required. These suggestions/comments are summarized below.

Method 7-00lb and 7-002b (Alternaria dauci and A. radicina / Daucus carota)– Requires an option to use streptomy-

cin where bacterial saprophytes are a problem

– Add antibiotics in the media for agar methods (see Method 7-014)

Method 7-015 (Neotyphodium/Festuca and Lolium spp.)– Add a way to distinguish viable fungi– Need a cheaper method

Method 7-016 (Phomopsis/Glycine max)– Option on MA (Malt Agar) at 20 °C– Alternative reagents (low priority)– Alternative reagent (blotter)– There are no treatments to inhibit

germination of seedlings in the agar method that make the evaluation pro-cess become difficult

Method 7-017 and 7-018 (Alternaria and Colletotrichum on Linum)– Amalgamation with other methods (see

method 7-007, 20 °C dark or under UV)– For both to use the same temperature

20 °C (that is used in method 7-007), the same light (dark as 7-007) or NUV/dark, 12/12 (as in 7-017 and 7-018).

– Same method should be useful for Botrytis, Alternaria and Colletotrichum. Sometimes it would be useful for surface sterilization of the seeds

– Alternative reagents

Suggestions for technological changes in methods included the following:– Add the size of working sample in the

methods 7-001a, 7-001b, 7-002a, 7-002b, 7-015, 7-016, 7-017, 7-018

– Add antibiotics

In response to the question of whether the methods used for treated seeds, the follow-ing replies were received:

Two laboratories used the methods on treated seed and and one laboratory rarely. One of these laboratories reported that if the seeds were treated they added the

sentence “This method is not covered by the International Rules for Seed Testing” on the certificate.

All the other laboratories replied that they did not use these methods on treated seeds.

SHC proposals

As a result of the review and in particular comments received via the questionnaires, the SHC makes the following proposals for each method.

Method 7-00la (Alternaria dauci / Daucus carota)1. Accept Method with new review date

(2012)2. Propose new wording for sample prepa-

ration section

Method 7-001b (Alternaria dauci / Daucus carota)1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section

Method 7-002a (Alternaria radicina /Daucus carota)1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section

The 2007 ISTA Seed Health Committee Official Method Review

T.A.S. Aveling1 and R. Blanco2 1Chair, ISTA Seed Health Committee; 2Member, ISTA Seed Health Committee

1Department of Microbiology and Plant PathologyFABI, University of PretoriaPretoria 0002South [email protected]. de Producción VegetalEPS Universidad de Almería4120 AlmeríaSpain

Table 1. The eight ISTA Official Seed Health Testing Methods to be reviewed in 2007

Method No. Pathogen Host7-001a (Blotter) Alternaria dauci Daucus carota7-001b (Malt agar) Alternaria dauci Daucus carota7-002 a (Blotter) Alternaria radicina Daucus carota7-002b (Malt agar) Alternaria radicina Daucus carota7-015 Neotyphodium spp. Festuca and Lolium spp.7-016 Phomopsis complex Glycine max7-017 Alternaria linicola Linum usitatissimum7-018 Colletotrichum lini Linum usitatissimum


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The 2007 ISTA Seed Health Committee Official Method Review

Method 7-002b (Alternaria radicina /Daucus carota)1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section

Method 7-015 (Neotyphodium/ Festuca and Lolium spp.)1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section

Method 7-016 (Phomopsis/ Glycine max)1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section

Method 7-017 (Alternaria on Linum)1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section3. SHC to establish working group to look

at alignment of method with methods 7-007 and 7-018

Method 7-018 (Colletotricum on Linum)1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section3. SHC to establish working group to look

at alignment of method with methods 7-007 and 7-017

General editing

All methods will be subject to editing of errors, correction of taxonomy and updat-ed formatting where necessary.

In conclusion, no formal requests for changes or withdrawal of any of the meth-ods under review were submitted to the ISTA Secretariat or the ISTA-SHC since their adoption in 2002. Although this indi-cates that the methods are fit for purpose, it has been brought to the attention of the SHC that some laboratories were not en-tirely happy with all methods. The reviews were therefore intended to give all seed health laboratories the opportunity to con-tribute to the first five year review of Meth-ods approved in 2002.

The Seed Health Committee wishes to thank all the laboratories for taking the time to complete the questionaires. Their inputs are greatly appreciated.�

ISTA Seed Health Committee Official Method Review 2010 and 2011

T.A.S. Aveling Chair, ISTA Seed Health Committee

Department of Microbiology and Plant PathologyFABI, University of PretoriaPretoria 0002South [email protected]

Table 1. The two ISTA Official Seed Health Testing Methods reviewed in 2010, the number of respondent laboratories using individual methods and whether they consider them fit for purpose.

Method Pathogen Host No. of laboratories using method

Fit for purpose?Yes No

7-019 Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris

Brassica spp. 3 3 0

7-020 Xanthomonas hortorum pv. carotae Daucus carota 3 3 0

The Seed Health Method Validation Programme requires that methods

approved as Official Methods should be reviewed every 5 years to ensure their continuing effectiveness and suitability. Official Seed Health Testing Methods are found in the International Rules for Seed Testing 2012, Annexe to Chapter 7, Seed Health Testing Methods. There are 12 ISTA Official Seed Health Testing Meth-ods that were approved in 2001 and 2006 (Table 2), one in each of 2004 and 2005 (listed in Table 1) and were therefore due for review in 2010 and 2011. As part of the review process a questionnaire was sent to all ISTA Member Laboratories and a copy

was posted on the ISTA web-site for other interested bodies to respond.

Report on the 2010 Review questionnaire

As there was only one method approved in both 2004 and 2005 the review question-naire for both methods was sent to labo-ratories in 2010. Five laboratories from five different countries answered the 2010 method review questionnaire. Of these, one

laboratory did not use either of the two methods.

Replies to the questionnaire

7-019 All three laboratories that used Method

7-019 reported it fit for purpose. However, one laboratory stated that ‘Reliability: we need an improved method to detect the pathogen localized internally in seeds and to be applicable for treated seeds’ and that this was considered a ‘high priority’.


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7-020 All three laboratories that used Method

7-020 reported it fit for purpose. One labo-ratory reported ‘DNA extraction: In the method, there is no DNA extraction step. In our laboratory, we use a NaOH extrac-tion which gives better results on the tested strains (based on comparison between the two methods).’

To the question “neither method is validated for use on untreated seed. Do you have a need to test treated seeds for these pathogens? If yes please give a brief explanation”:

Two comments were received:1) ‘Yes. Some seed companies need a Xcc

certificate for cabbage seeds which are treated with chemicals. The country where seed companies will export the treated seeds requires an ISTA Certifi-cate, but treated seed samples are not applicable to ISTA Rules.’

2) ‘We receive treated seeds often and we have to wash off the fungicide as this can inhibit bacterial growth on semi-selective media. Having a validated, reliable, and repeatable method for fun-gicide treated seed would be beneficial.’

SHC proposalsAs a result of the review and in particular

comments received via the Questionnaires the SHC makes the following proposals for each Method.

Method 7-019 Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris/ Brassica spp1. Accept Method with new review date

(2015).

2. Propose new wording for sample prepa-ration section.

3. SHC working group to work on validation of a method using hot water treated seed.

Method 7-020 Xanthomonas hortorum pv. carotae / Daucus carota1. Accept Method with new review date

(2015).2. Propose new wording for sample prepa-

ration section.

Report on the 2011 review questionnaire

Table 2 reports the 13 Seed Health Meth-ods reviewed in 2011.

Twelve of the above methods (7-003 to 7-014)(Table 2) were accepted in 2001 and were reviewed in 2006. Improvements to these methods since the 2006 review are in-cluded in Table 3.

Replies to the 2011 method review questionnaire

Seventeen laboratories from 14 countries answered the 2011 review questionnaire (Table 4).

7-003Eight laboratories found the method fit

for purpose. The following comment was made:

The preparation of 3% malt solution is not clear. The following table should be added to the protocol:

Preparation of Malt Solution

Compound g/lMalt extract (manufacturer?) 30De-ionised/distilled Water 1000 ml

– It is not written if the solution has to be previously sterilized and time of autoclave.

– It is not written if the filter paper has to be clean or autoclaved.

– Where do you put the filter paper? On the bottom of the plate or on the lid?

– Do you seal the plates with Parafilm? In order to prevent moisture loss: Is it pos-sible to wrap the plates with aluminium foil to prevent moisture loss and to incu-bate in darkness?

– Is it possible to incubate the plates in closed containers?

– Examination: We think that it is not nec-essary to examine for roots showing a soft rot. We should look with the aid of the binocular for typical grey mycelium like it is shown in figures no. 2 and 3. In low magnification inexperienced exam-iner can confuse Cladosporium sp. with Botrytis sp.

– It gives trend of infection as the time of observation is in stages.

– Confusion between incubation (it is written 9 days) and examination 5 days, 7 days, 9 days and it is repeated 7 and 9 days. Could it be written “during incuba-tion seeds have to be…” Is it necessary to check 3 times all plates? Could it be added depending on the infection?

– Why in materials the method assume a petri dishes with a diameter of 9 cm and

Table 2. The thirteen ISTA Official Seed Health Testing Methods reviewed in 2011

Method Pathogen Host7-003 Botrytis cinera Helianthus annuus7-004 Leptosphaeria maculans Brassicaceae7-005 Ascochyta pisi Pisum sativum7-006 Colletotrichum lindemuthianum Phaseolus vulgaris7-007 Botrytis cinerea Linum usitatissimum7-008 Caloscypa fulgens Picea engelmannii and Picea glauca7-009 Fusarium circinatum (Fusarium moniliforme var. subglutinans) Pinus taeda and Pinus elliottii7-010 Drechslera oryzae Oryza sativa7-011 Pyricularia oryzae Oryza sativa7-012 Alternaria padwickii Oryza sativa7-013 Ustilago nuda Hordeum vulgare7-014 Septoria nodorum Triticum aestivum7-021 Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli and X. axonopodis pv. phaseoli var. fuscans Phaseolus vulgaris


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Table 3. Suggested further improvements to methods after 2006 review and actions by SHC since the 2006 review.

Method Pathogen Desired improvement after 2006 review Action by SHC since last review7-003 Botrytis cinerea/

Helianthus annuusReagents (replace 3% malt agar)Alternative filter paper (Whatman No.1 too specific).

1. Introduced wording to allow use of different ‘blotter’ papers where equivalent.2. Re-evaluated the use of 3% Malt Agar. Changes to be introduced in 2012 (Seed Testing International, April, 2011)

7-004 Leptosphaeria macu-lans/ Brassicaceae

Alternative to 2,4-D.Alternative filter paper (Whatman No.1 too specific).Specificity, Sensitivity & Reproducibility.

Data from 2002 Comparative Test (CT) rejected.New CT being organized (2011) with objective to remove use of 2,4-D for freezer blotter method.

7-005 Ascochyta pisi/Pisum sativum

Add other pea pathogens (M. pinodes and P. medicaginis var pinodella)

Extension of method for 2 further pathogens (Mycosphaere-lla pinodes & Phoma medicaginis var. pinodella) CT completed 2011 and submitted to ISTA for approval Under ISTA Method Validation Programme.

7-006 Colletotrichum lindemuthianum/ Phaseolus vulgaris

ReagentsSpecificity, Sensitivity & Reproducibility.

–

7-007 Botrytis cinerea/ Linum usitatissimum

Alignment of methods 7-017, 7-018 and 7-007 all patho-gens of L. usitatissimum.

New working group established and work ongoing to align methods 7-007, 7-017 & 7.018.

7-008 Caloscypha fulgens Picea engelmanii and Picea glauca –7-009 Fusarium moniliforme

var. subglutinans (Fusarium circinatum)

Pinus taeda and Pinus elliotti Pathogen name updated. SHC maintaining links with Plant Protection Organisations on new proposals for testing this quarantine pathogen. Decision whether to withdraw method being considered

7-010 Drechslera oryzae/ Oryza sativa

Specificity, Sensitivity & Reproducibility.Reagents

–

7-011 Pyricularia oryzae/ Oryza sativa


–

7-012 Alternaria padwickii/ Oryza sativa


–

7-013 Ustilago nuda/Hor-deum vulgare

Replace lactophenolUse funnel containing glycerol:water 2:1 to aid cleaning of embryos.Add use of trypan blue.

Lactophenol replaced by lactic acid method in 2008.

7-014 Septoria nodorum/ Triticum aestivum

Add Microdochium nivale and Fusarium spp. Include com-plementary methods (e.g. luminous blotter test or freezing blotter method)

No progress for aligning with Method 7-022 Microdochium spp.

Table 4. Number of respondent laboratories using individual methods and whether they consider them fit for purpose.

Method Pathogen No. of laboratories using method

Fit for purpose?Yes No

7-003 Botrytis cinerea/ Helianthus annuus 8 8 07-004 Leptosphaeria maculans/ Brassicaceae 6 4 27-005 Ascochyta pisi/Pisum sativum 11 10 17-006 Colletotrichum lindemuthianum/ Phaseolus vulgaris 12 11 17-007 Botrytis cinerea/ Linum usitatissimum 6 5 17-008 Caloscypa fulgens/ Picea engelmannii and Picea glauca 0 0 07-009 Fusarium circinatum (Fusarium moniliforme var. subglutinans)l Pinus taeda and Pinus elliottii 1 1 07-010 Drechslera oryzae/ Oryza sativa 4 4 07-011 Pyricularia oryzae/ Oryza sativa 4 4 07-012 Alternaria padwickii/ Oryza sativa 4 4 07-013 Ustilago nuda/Hordeum vulgare 8 8 07-014 Septoria nodorum/ Triticum aestivum 6 6 07-021 Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli and X.axonopodis pv. phaseoli var. fuscans/ Phaseolus vulgaris 3 2 1


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in the description of the method it is sug-gested two different diameters (80 and 90 mm). The Whatman filter paper we have, No. 1, Cat No. 1001 090, is 90 mm and not 88 mm.

Examination 7-003-4: In doubtful cases confirmation…….ribbon-like (sometimes twisted) hyphae and tufts of branching conidiophores. – high priority.

7-004 Four laboratories found the method fit

for purpose.Two laboratories found the method

not fit for purpose stating that 1) method should be ‘without 2,4D solution’, medium priority and 2) ‘the principle of the method is good. In our comparisons (last year) 2,4-D is better than FB. But 50 seeds per dish is too many (we use 25) and, the descrip-tion of the pathogen and images needs to be updated’ – high priority.

The following comments were made:1) description of minimum distance be-

tween seeds when placed on filter paper. Gives the laboratory possibilities to use different size Petri dishes and equivalent filter papers – low priority.

2) pycnidia are produced more efficiently and mycelium criteria are easily ob-served on malt agar. Method should include MA – low priority.

3) Four layers of filter paper are soaked in DI water, drained up to the drip stage and placed on a plastic tray 20 × 20 cm, 3 cm depth. Seeds are placed on the moist paper by the aid of a vacuum board (it is easier and quicker than manual) and then the tray is covered by a transparent nylon bag. In this case sowing density is 50 seeds per one tray.

If germination of the seeds will be avoided, by using deep freeze or 2,4-D, usually it will not be possible to see infected seedlings in the blotter test as it is described in Fig. 2. – high priority.

7-005Ten laboratories found the method fit for

purpose.One laboratory found the method not fit

for purpose and suggested the use of light instead of darkness and that this was of medium priority.

Comments made by three laboratories:1) Method but better with NUV-light.2) Greater specificity and reproducibility

required – low priority.3) It is highly recommended to compare

the infection levels with and without the addition of antibiotics to Malt agar and PDA. CCP – The malt agar source can influence the results. Whenever a new batch of malt agar is used a check on the quality should be made using a ref-erence lot with a known infection level or a reference culture. – high priority.

7-006Eleven laboratories stated that the meth-

od was fit for purpose, whilst one stated that it was not fit for purpose but no com-ment was provided.

The following comment was made by one laboratory: Fig. 1 is confusing because it is not explained and mentioned in the text. This figure may stay in the protocol only by adding the paragraph from the previous working sheets: “Direct inspection Lesions on severely infected seeds may be either brown with whitish centres surrounded by a pale brown to dark brown area or red-dish lesions of variable size (Fig.1). Direct inspection is not a dependable method, as not all infected seeds bear symptoms and on dark-skinned varieties symptoms are more difficult to see.” – low priority. A photo was provided.

7-007Five laboratories found the method fit

for purpose.One laboratory found the method not

fit for purpose and stated ‘done as 7-017 and 7-018, not possible to use two differ-ent methods, important one method for all diseases of Linum’.

The following comments were given by two laboratories:1) More specificity and sensitivity required

– low priority2) Fig. 1 is confusing because it is not ex-

plained and mentioned in the text. This figure may stay in the protocol only by adding the paragraph from the previous working sheets: « Direct inspection Heavily diseased seed samples have grey dull aspect instead of a bright appear-ance (Fig. 1), but individually infected seeds are difficult to select. Infected seeds may have a healthy appearance, therefore direct inspection is useful only for indicating heavily diseased lots. » – low priority

7-009One laboratory found the method fit for

purpose but stated that ‘It is recommended to examine characters on CLA (macroco-nidia, microconidia and polyphialides) and PDA (mycelial growth and agar pigmenta-tion). Fusarium species / Nelson, Toussoun and Marasas.’

7-010Four laboratories found the method fit

for purpose.One comment was received based on

Methods 7-010, 7-011 and 7-012: Details about preparation of Petri dishes are miss-ing; How many layers of filter paper should be used? Should the filter papers be dipped in distilled, or tap water? We used 3 layers of filter paper, Whatman No. 1, 9.0 cm. We dipped the filter papers in sterile dis-tilled water. Please see the book: Common Laboratory Seed Health Testing Methods for Detecting Fungi, S. B. Mathur, Olga Kongsdal (2003), pages 89-98.After the 4th day of incubation we noticed that the blotters were too dry so we added 1.5 ml of sterile distilled water to each petri dish. Usually in our laboratory (not for rice) we use the following blotter test: Seeds are placed evenly on 4 layers of moist filter pa-per on a plastic tray 20X20 cm, 3 cm depth, covered by a transparent nylon bag. Then


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the trays are taken carefully to the incuba-tion room. – high priority.


for purpose, no comments.


for purpose, no comments

7-013Eight laboratories found the method fit

for purpose.Six laboratories provided comments:

1) alternative reagents: 1 L lactic acid solution should be composed of 900 ml lactic acid and 100 ml glycerine – high priority.

2) alternative incubation method for step 2.5 – high priority.

3) laboratory already using the new ver-sion 7-013b.

4) reproducibility, sensitivity – high priority.

5) alternative reagents – e.g., optional use of a stain to make identification easier. Should the duration of boiling the em-bryos in lactic acid solution be stated as a critical control point (CCP) ? – high priority.

6) staining of embryos improve detection. Method should include staining – low priority.

7-014Six laboratories found the method fit for

purpose.Three laboratories provided comments:

1) sensitivity, specificity – high priority2) would be better to align with Micro-

dochium – low priority3) In preparation of media and solutions

it is written that 1 mg of Streptomycin sulfate is added to the agar. Is it cor-rect? In the method it is written 100 ppm Streptomycin sulfate. For aligning with method 7-022 Micro-dochium spp. this laboratory provided a suggestion for improvement of 7-022.

7-021Two laboratories found the method fit

for purpose.One laboratory found the method not fit

for purpose as a ‘pathogenicity test could give a false positive’ – high priority.

Other comments:1) method should propose to soak in

water – low priority2) reproducibility and sensitivity – high

priority.

To the question: ‘is there a need to respond to a technological change in one or more methods ? If yes explain in a few words.’:

Six laboratories responded ‘No’.Comments from other laboratories:

1) 7-021: Pathogenicity test not suitable. It must be replaced by PCR to check suspect colonies of Xap.

2) Yes, perhaps an alternative test method (e.g. morphological, ELISA, PCR, etc.) could be given for the tests selected, in so far as is reasonably practicable. I appreciate that this is currently being done for Ustilago nuda with the ‘Nordic Method’.

3) In method 7-013, at Point 2.5, the change of reagent from lactophenol to lactic acid solution has meant another change is required in incubation, from boiling embryos for 5 minutes, to 20 minutes incubation at either room temperature or 37 °C to avoid damag-ing embryo scutellums with the highly acidic lactic acid solution.

To the question: ‘most methods are not validated for use on treated seed. Do you have a need to test treated seeds for these pathogens ? If yes please give brief explanation.’:

Seven laboratories responded ‘No’.Comments from other laboratories:

1) We do have a need to test treated seeds.2) 7-003 Botrytis cinerea on Helianthus

annuus: The majority of the samples arrive treated. We have experience

that strong pathogen infection can be detected even on treated seeds.

3) Method 7-021: Most seed samples are treated.

4) We do have a need to test treated seeds for most of the tested pathogens and then we add to the result’s report the following remark: “Seed treatments may affect the performance of this test and hence the reliability of the results”.

5) Yes, for treated seeds with chemical and disinfested seeds.

6) We regularly use the test on treated seeds – to evaluate the efficacy of seed treatments. But this is not the same as evaluating the health status of the seed. Also one could never ‘validate’ a test method for all possible seed treatments. So the status generally should stand as not being validated for use on treated seed. There is perhaps also often a need to define ‘treatment’ – probably the wording should be ‘chemical, biological or physical. Is ‘priming’ a treatment? It also has effects on apparent seed heath status.

7) Sometimes we get asked to test treated seed but not of the above methods. The problem is that for one treatment it can be possible but for example with biological treatments the bacteria will not start to be active on some artificial substrates.

In general

Important remarks:1. It is necessary to add critical control

points (indicated by CCP) to every testing method (regarding agar manu-facturer, examination, etc.).

2. Reference Material – It is necessary to plate an infected seed sample by the target pathogen or reference cultures, parallel to the tested seed sample. A positive control should be separated from the tested sample in order to avoid disruption of the results. In case the laboratory does not have a positive control, morphological descriptions,


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photos and diagrams from the profes-sional literature should be used.

3. According to our experience it is possi-ble to dissolve Streptomycin Sulfate in sterile water without filter sterilization.

4. Some laboratories recommend the use of quarter-strength (1/4) potato dex-trose agar (PDA) because it encour-ages sporulation and saves money.

5. All the photos should be in colour (please note: 7-007-7 Fig 3 compared with 7-003-6) and in the best quality.

6. The host name should appear in English (in brackets) in every title of testing method.

SHC proposals

As a result of the review and in particular comments received via the Questionnaires the SHC makes the following proposals for each Method.

Method 7-003 Botrytis cinerea/ Helianthus annuus1. Accept Method with new review date

(2016).2. Propose new wording for media prepa-

ration and examination sections.

Method 7-004 Leptosphaeria maculans/ Brassicaceae1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section.3. SHC Working Group to submit valida-

tion data for alternative to current 2,4-D method.

Method 7-005 Ascochyta pisi/Pisum sativum1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section.3. Extention of method for two extra

pathogens (Mycosphaerella pinodes & Phoma medicaginis var. pinodella) submitted to ISTA for approval under ISTA Method Validation Programme.

Method 7-006 Colletotrichum lindemuthianum/ Phaseolus vulgaris1. Accept Method with new review date


ration and examination sections.

Method 7-007 Botrytis cinerea/ Linum usitatissimum1. Accept Method with new review date


ration and examination sections.3. SHC to establish working group to look

at alignment of method with methods 7-017 and 7-018.

Method 7-008 Caloscypa fulgens/ Picea engelmannii and Picea glauca1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section.

Method 7-009 Fusarium circinans/ Pinus taeda and Pinus elliottii1. Accept Method with new review date

(2016).2. SHC maintaining links with Plant Pro-

tection Organisations on new proposals for testing this quarantine pathogen. Decision whether to withdraw method being considered.

Method 7-010 Drechslera oryzae/ Oryza sativa1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section.

Method 7-011 Pyricularia oryzae/ Oryza sativa1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section.

Method 7-012 Alternaria padwickii/ Oryza sativa1. Accept Method with new review date

(2016).

2. Propose new wording for sample prepa-ration section.

Method 7-013 Ustilago nuda/Hordeum vulgare1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section.

Method 7-014 Septoria nodorum/ Triticum aestivum1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section.3. SHC to consider amalgamating 7-022

M. nivale method sheet with Method Sheet 7-014.

Method 7-021 Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli and X.axonopodis pv. phaseoli var. fuscans/ Phaseolus vulgaris1. Accept Method with new review date


ration section.

General editingAll methods will be subject to editing of

errors, correction of taxonomy and updat-ed formatting where necessary.

In conclusion, no formal requests for changes or withdrawal of any of the meth-ods under review were submitted to the ISTA Secretariat or the ISTA-SHC since their adoption in 2001, 2004, 2005 and 2006. It may appear that all the methods are thus considered fit for purpose. How-ever, it was brought to the attention of the SHC that various laboratories were not entirely happy with all methods. The re-views were therefore intended to give all seed health laboratories the opportunity to contribute to the second five year review of Methods approved in 2001, and to those approved in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

The Seed Health Committee wishes to thank all the laboratories for taking the time to complete the questionnaires. Their inputs are greatly appreciated.



ACCREDITATION

The number of ISTA-accredited labo-ratories is increasing worldwide from

year to year. Up to the end of 2011, 123 laboratories with ISTA accreditation were counted. Five first-accreditation audits were performed in 2011 in Asia and Eu-rope, and some more are scheduled to take place in Asia in 2012.

Reporting on ISTA Certificates, a part of the ISTA Proficiency Test Programme

Re-accreditation audits are scheduled every three years, and between two audits, laboratory performance is monitored by the ISTA Proficiency Test Programme. Once every year the Proficiency Test Programme includes a reporting exercise. Participating laboratories receive a specimen ISTA Cer-tificate and are asked to report the result

of one of the tested samples. In 2011, the proficiency test round samples “11-2 T.aes” on Triticum aestivum were shipped to the 149 participants together with one Orange International Seed Lot Certificate (OIC) as a specimen. The test round comprised requests for purity, other seed determina-tion, germination, moisture determination and viability testing. 100 participants were accredited laboratories and obliged to per-form at least one of the scheduled tests. 49 laboratories were volunteers. Volunteer laboratories are either accredited laborato-ries that are not accredited for the related crop group or non-accredited laboratories.

Some certificates were not evaluated, and were considered to be invalid, if they were handwritten or contained signs of alterations or erasures, or the signature or stamp or date of issue were missing.

94 of the 100 obligatory-test participants submitted an OIC for review, of which 5 were invalid. There were hence 89 valid OICs for further evaluation.

35 of the 49 voluntary participants sub-mitted an OIC for review, of which 9 were invalid. There were hence 26 valid OICs for further evaluation.

The valid OICs were evaluated by the Accreditation and Technical Department. Table 1 shows a selection of the detected non-conformities.

The major non-conformity for issuing OICs was in the area of reporting the re-sults of the other seed determination (27% of the obligatory-test and 65% of the vol-unteer laboratories). The results were ei-ther missing or incomplete. Frequently, the results were incorrectly reported. A high number of non-conformities were also ob-served in the reporting of the other seed fraction of the purity analysis (16% of the obligatory-test and 19% of the volunteer laboratories).

10% of the OICs submitted from oblig-atory-test laboratories showed incomplete or incorrect information when reporting information provided by the applicant, information about the testing and issuing laboratory or information about the sam-pling laboratory.

Not all obligatory-test laboratories were also obliged to participate in moisture de-termination and viability testing. This ex-plains why only 79 laboratories reported their moisture results. Of these, 22 labora-tories did not report which moisture meth-od had been applied, which is not in accor-dance with the ISTA Rules. Similarly, only 68 laboratories reported viability results on the OICs, and 7 of these used a deviating method without indicating this on the OIC.

The test results of the voluntary labora-tories are not presented in this paper.

This exercise on reporting test results on a specimen ISTA Certificate shows that there are areas where reporting is rela-tively uniform among ISTA laboratories worldwide. However, it also identifies ar-eas where improvements in reporting are

Information from the ISTA Accreditation SystemR. El-Khadem

ISTA Accreditation and Technical Department

Table 1. Selected non-conformities of reporting in Proficiency Test “11-2 T.aes” on Triticum aestivum

Obligatory-test par-ticipants (n = 89)

Volunteer partici-pants (n = 26)

Information about the applicant incomplete or not in accord-ance with instruction letter

9 (10%) 3

Information about the seed lot incomplete (weight or category missing, misspelling)

4 4

Information about the testing and issuing laboratory incom-plete (e.g. laboratory code missing)

9 (10%) 2

Information about the sampling laboratory incomplete (e.g. laboratory code or laboratory name missing or not following instruction)

9 (10%) 5

Date of sampling missing or wrong (e.g. wrong date format) 1 3Date of sample receipt implausible, missing or wrong 3 3Date test conducted implausible, missing or wrong 4 3Test number very likely not unique in laboratory 1 2Purity: results do not add up to 100.0 % 3 1Purity: kind of inert matter missing 1 0Purity: kind of other seeds not correct (missing, synonyms used, misspelling, seed count included)

14 (16%) 5 (19%)

Other seed determination: results missing, incomplete or in-correctly reported (e.g. weight of sample missing, type of test, misspelling, not reported under “Other determinations”)

24 (27%) 17 (65%)

Germination: number of days missing, implausible or tran-scription error

3 1

Germination: results do not add up to 100 1 0Germination: method missing or transcription error 1 1


ACCREDITATION

Today’s ISTA Proficiency Test Programme, a corner stone for Accreditation

necessary. These areas seem to be prob-lematic for obligatory-test laboratories, but also for volunteer laboratories. Further in-vestigations are needed to identify the root causes of the described non-conformities. Once they have been identified, further steps shall be defined to improve unifor-mity in reporting seed testing results on International Certificates.

Non-conformities identified during ISTA (re-)accreditation audits

The non-conformities identified in qual-ity management systems during ISTA audits in 2011 were summarized. Each non-conformity was assigned to one single category. Categories included document control, training, certificate, monitor-ing, non-conforming work/corrective ac-tions, internal audits etc. Figure 1 shows the the ten most important categories of non-conformities.

23% of the recorded non-conformities were related to document control issues. Typical non-conformities in this area were:– Documents and/or forms were not con-

trolled (e.g. version number, page num-bers, total page number missing).

– Uncontrolled or old versions of docu-ments were in use.

– Documents were not updated after ISTA Rules changes.

– The master-list of controlled documents was missing or incomplete.

12% of non-conformities were related to the training procedure, e.g.:– The training of samplers and/or analysts

was not performed.– The training was performed but no re-

cords were available.– The internal auditors of the laboratory

did not obtain any training.

During the review of the issued ISTA Cer-tificates, the auditors recorded non-con-formities with a share of 10% of the total recorded audit findings. The following is an extract of possible non-conformities:– No copies were available of issued ISTA

Certificates (including the stamp and signature).

– Certificates were not issued in accord-ance to the ISTA Rules.

– Certificates were issued for species or tests not listed in the laboratory’s scope of accreditation.

As described in the current ISTA Accredi-tation Standard, seed testing laboratories must have a monitoring programme in place. 10% of the non-conformities were connected with the monitoring process:– No monitoring programme of staff was

in place.– No monitoring programme covering all

tests within the laboratory’s scope of ac-creditation was in place.

– No monitoring was done for the last two years.

– The obtained data was not recorded in such a way to allow trends to be detected.

For the continuous improvement of the laboratory’s quality management system, the laboratory must report non-conform-ing work (NCW) and record appropriate corrective actions (CAR). 9% of the total audit findings were issues related to this process:– Non-conforming work was not recorded.– Corrective actions were taken but not

recorded.

– Effectiveness of corrective actions was not measured.

– The laboratory did not follow up after poor performance in the ISTA Proficien-cy Test Programme.

9% of the total non-conformities were cat-egorized as issues related to standard op-erating procedure (SOP). In general, this category comprises findings where a docu-mented procedure (SOP or work instruc-tion or however called) is missing, incom-plete or incorrect, e.g.:– The laboratory did not follow its own

SOP.– Documents were missing for a process.– Documents were not complete or did not

reflect the steps in the required detail.– Documents needed revision.

The remaining non-conformities were as-signed to other categories of which none exceeded 7%; they are therefore not pre-sented here.

With this summary report we hope to have shared valuable information for ac-credited laboratories and for those seeking accreditation. The information should help laboratories to evaluate their own quality systems and check their compliance with the ISTA Accreditation Standard.�

Figure 1. System non-conformities identified in audits in 2011, listed by category. NCW = non-conforming work; CAR = corrective action report; SOP = standard operating procedure



ACCREDITATION

Accreditation changes

Laboratory accreditation changes Status 1 September 2012

Re-accreditationsAustralia AUDL0600Tasmanian Seed LaboratoryDepartment of Primary Industry Water & Environment165 Westbury Rd, Prospect 7250P.O. Box 46Kings Meadows 7249, TasmaniaPhone: +61 3 63365248Fax: +61 3 63444961E-mail: [email protected]

AUDL0900AsureQuality, Seed Laboratory Tullamarine3–5 Lillee CrescentTullamarine, Victoria 3043Phone: +61 3 8318 9023Fax: +61 3 8318 9002E-mail: [email protected]

Czech Republic CZDL0300Central Institute for Supervising and Testing in Agriculture, Department of Seed TestingZa opravnou 4, 5 - Motol150 06 PrahaPhone: +420 2 57211751Fax: +420 257211748Mail: [email protected]

France FRML0600Syngenta Seeds SASLa Grangette 232220 LombezPhone: +33 562 97 626024Fax: +33 562 625511E-mail: [email protected]

FRML0800F.N.P.S.M.S. Laboratory21 chemin de Pau64121 MontardonPhone: +33 5 59 12 67 32Fax: +33 5 59 12 67 10E-mail: [email protected]

FRML0900Syngenta Seeds SASRte de Francescas BP3747600 NeracPhone: +33 553 976 200Fax: +33 553 976 296E-mail: [email protected]

Germany DEDL0400Landwirtschaftliches Technologiezentrum Augustenberg (LTZ)Referat 23 Saatgutuntersuchung und Ange-wandte BotanikNesslerstrasse 23-3176227 KarlsruhePhone: +49 721 9468150Fax: +49 7219468387E-mail: [email protected]

Italy ITDL0300Ente Nazionale Sementi EletteLaboratorio Analisi SementiVia Emilia 19 - km 30726838 Tavazzano (LO)Phone: +39 0371 761919Fax: +39 0371760812E-mail: [email protected]

ITML0600Centro Nazionale per lo studio e la Conservazi-one della Biodiversita ForestaleVia del Ponte 25637020 Peri, VeronaPhone: +39 45 628 4071Fax: +39 45 628 4089E-mail: [email protected]

Japan JPDL0300National Livestock Breeding CenterNagano Station2029-1 ArakodaSaku, Nagano 385-0007Phone: +81 267 672501Fax: +81 267 684743E-mail: [email protected]

JPML0500Sakata Seed CorporationSeed Testing Department1660, Hazawa-Cho, Kanagawa-kuYokohama, 221-0863Phone: +81 45 383 1660Fax: +81 45 3719366E-mail: [email protected]

Kenya KEDL0100KEPHIS Seed Testing LaboratoryP.O. Box 167920100 NakuruPhone: + 254 20 3536170Fax: +254 20 3536170E-mail: [email protected]

Kyrgyzstan KGDL0100Republican Seed Inspection RSI, Central Seed Laboratory4-A, Toktonaliev StreetBishkek, 720055Phone: +996 312 544 197Fax: +996 312 540 423E-mail: [email protected]

Latvia LVDL01National Seed Testing LaboratoryLielvardes str. 36/381006 RigaPhone: +371 711 2716Fax: +371 711 3085E-mail: [email protected]

Netherlands NLML0500Innoseeds BVPostbus 14420 AA KapellePhone: +31 113 347 911Fax: +31 113 330 110E-mail: [email protected]

New Zealand NZDL0100AsureQuality Limited, Palmerston North Seed Laboratory, Batchelar Agriculture CentreTennent Drive, P.O. Box 609Palmerston NorthPhone: +64 6 351 7946Fax: +64 6 351 7907E-mail: [email protected]

NZDL0200Institute of Natural ResourcesMassey UniversityPB 11 222, Tennent Drive4442 Palmerston NorthPhone: +64 6 3505799Fax: +64 6 3505649E-mail: [email protected]

NZML0300New Zealand Seedlab60 Ryans Road, P.O. Box 16-101ChristchurchPhone: +64 3 3428860Fax: +64 3 3428820E-mail: [email protected]


ACCREDITATION

Accreditation changes

Romania ROML0600Monsanto Romania Srl.Sinesti PlantE 85/DN2 Road, Urziceni, km 36+200, no 600-611/1927220 Sinesti, Ialomita countyPhone: +40728115016Fax: +40243 207 780E-mail: [email protected]

Switzerland CHDL0100Forschungsanstalt Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon ARTSaatgutprüfungReckenholzstrasse 1918046 ZürichPhone: +41 44 3777111Fax: +41 44 3777201E-mail: [email protected]

Thailand THML0300East West Seed Company LimitedQuality Assurance50/1 Moo 2, Sainoi-Bang Bua Thong Road,T. Sainoi, A. Sainoi, Nonthaburi 11150Phone: +66 2 831 7777Fax: +66 2 597 1229E-mail: Tapanee.Attamangkune@ eastwestseed.com

Uganda UGML0200Chemiphar (U) Ltd.P.O.Box 25525KampalaPhone: +256 41 268 882Fax: +256 41 268 834E-mail: [email protected]

United Kingdom GBML0600The Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA)Room 04GA08/09Sand HuttonYork YO41 1LZPhone: +44 1904 462 778Fax: +44 1904 462 147E-mail: [email protected]

United States USML0400Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc.2700 Camino del SolOxnard, CA 93030-7967Phone: +1 805 918 2443Fax: +1 805 9182424E-mail: [email protected]

USML0500Agri Seed Testing, Inc.1930 Davcor Court SESalem, OR 97302Phone: +1 503 585 1440Fax: +1 503 5880733E-mail: [email protected]

USML0600SGS North America236 32nd AvenueBrookings, SD 57006Phone: +1 605 6927611Fax: +1 605 6927617E-mail: [email protected]

USML0700Oregon State University Seed Laboratory3291 Campus WayCorvallis, OR 97331Phone: +1 541 737 4464Fax: +1 541 737 2126E-mail: [email protected]

Newly accreditedDenmark DKML0900Eurofins Steins Laboratory A/SSeed TestingPedersmindevej 18363 HoerningPhone: +45 2020 3092Fax: +45 7660 4066E-mail: [email protected]

Indonesia IDML0200PT East West Seed IndonesiaQuality AssuranceCampaka, Kabupaten PurwakartaDesa Benteng, P.O. Box 141181 West JavaPhone: +62 264 201 871Fax: +62 264 201 875E-mail: [email protected]

Nepal NPDL0200Central Seed Testing LaboratorySeed Quality Control CentreMinistry of Agricultural DevelopmentHarihar BhawanPulchowk, LalitpurPhone: +977 1 534258Fax: +977 1 521359E-mail: [email protected]

Termination of accreditationDenmark DKML0500DLF-Trifolium A/S Faborgvej 2485250 OdenseDK-Denmark

India INML0400Advanta India Limited“Unicorn House”, 3, Balaji enclaveNear Gunrock, Diamond Point,Transport RoadSecunderabad, 500 009

INML1200Nuziveedu Seeds LimitedSeed Testing LaboratorySurvey no: 183, KompallyQuthbullapur MandalSecunderabad 500014

South Korea KRDL0100Central Seed Testing LaboratoryInspection Division,Experiment Research Institute of NAQS560, 3-Ga, Dangsan-DongYoungdeungpo-Gu, Seoul

The 17th ISTA GMO Proficiency Test will focus on the detection and/or the

quantification of transgenic events in a de-fined number of soya seed samples.

The ISTA GMO Proficiency Test is open not only to laboratories involved in GM seed testing, but also to laboratories in-volved in food and feed GM testing.

Your laboratory can select the appropri-ate method to detect the presence or ab-sence of GM seeds and to quantify their presence in samples of conventional seeds.

Since GMO testing has been included in the ISTA Accreditation Programme, par-ticipation in the ISTA GMO Proficiency

Tests is obligatory for those ISTA mem-ber laboratories which have GMO testing methods in their scope of accreditation.

Laboratories interested in participating should please send a completed registra-tion form to the ISTA Secretariat before 15 November 2012.

The registration form, a detailed an-nouncement and the proceeding deadlines can be found on the ISTA web site under the link: www.seedtest.org/GMOPT

For further information please contact the ISTA Secretariat:E-mail: [email protected]: +41 44 838 60 01�

Call for registration: 17th ISTA GMO Proficiency Test on soya (Glycine max)


TRAINING AND EDuCATION

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The Seed Technology Centre, Ege University and ISTA Vig-our Committee invite you to a workshop on seed vigour

testing, to be held in İzmir, Turkey from 4th to 6th June 2013. The workshop will be made up of lectures, interactive seminars and practical experience in vigour testing. It will also offer the opportunity for general discussion of seed vigour and time for participants to ask specific questions regarding vigour testing procedures.

Workshop content

This workshop will include new developments in seed vigour that have occurred over the last two years and potential future developments in vigour testing as well as established vigour tests.

Lecture topics

– Introduction to seed vigour, its physiological basis and im-portance in crop production

– Conductivity test for Pisum sativum, Phaseolus vulgaris, Glycine max

– Controlled deterioration test for Brassica sp; application to other small seeded vegetables

– Radicle emergence test: development and validation. Ex-amples: maize, cotton, Brassica, pepper, cucurbits, general applicability

– Accelerated ageing test for soybeans– Seed ageing/metabolic repair hypothesis: the basis of all

vigour tests– Factors affecting seed vigour– Use of seed vigour

Practical work

All participants will complete the conductivity test and assess results from the controlled deterioration and radicle emergence tests. There will be demonstration of stages in the accelerated ageing and controlled deterioration tests.

Question and answer sessions

These will consider questions on all aspects of seed vigour and any vigour test.

Presenters of the workshop

– Dr Alison Powell (Chair of ISTA Vigour Committee, Univer-sity of Aberdeen, UK),

– Dr Stan Matthews (ISTA Vigour Committee, University of Aberdeen, UK)

– Dr Hülya İlbi (ISTA Vigour Committee, Seed Technology Centre, Ege University, Turkey).

Location

The workshop will take place at the Seed Technology Centre, Ege Unversity, İzmir, Turkey. The university campus (http://ege.edu.tr) is situated in Bornova, part of the Province of İzmir, the third largest city in Turkey. The University is based in 3700 ha of parkland and is a focus for the educational and cultural life of İzmir. The campus is 15 km from Adnan Menderes airport and about 10 km from central İzmir, and is linked to the city centre by frequent bus and underground services.

The city of İzmir itself is 8000 years old, with a history dating back to the Neolithic Age; the ancient name of the city is Smyr-na. It is a harbour city and has had a place in the commercial economy of the Mediterranean region since the 16th century. Both domestic and foreign trade have been highly developed in İzmir thanks to its free-trade zones, international fairs and in-dustrial zones. The harbour is the biggest importer and the sec-ond biggest exporter of the country, and the city is the touristic, industrial and cultural centre of the Aegean Region. İzmir also incorporates the nearby ancient cities of Ephesus, Pergamon, Sardis and Klazomenai, and centres of international tourism such as Kuşadası, Çeşme, Mordoğan and Foça.

It is easy to reach Antalya, the location of the 30th ISTA Congress, by air and bus. There are direct flights from İzmir to Antalya twice a day via Sunexpress Airways (www.sunexpress.com).

Local organiser

Hülya İlbi, Ege University, Faculty of AgricultureTelephone: +90 232 3111971 or +90 232 3394304Fax: +90 232 3115030Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

Accommodation

Accommodation is available either at the Anemon Ege Hotel or the Guest House of Ege University.

Anemon Ege Hotel (http://english.anemonhotels.com/otel.aspx?otel=anemonizmir) is a short walking distance from the Seed Technology Centre where the workshop will be held. Rooms with breakfast cost € 75 per night (single) or € 95 per night (double). Room fee also includes the transportation be-tween airport and hotel.

Anemon Ege Hotel:Tel. +90 232 373 48 62Fax +90 232 373 48 63

ISTA Vigour Testing Workshop İzmir, Turkey, 4–6 June 2013



ISTA Workshop announcements

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is also a short walking distance from Seed Technology Centre. Rooms with breakfast cost € 30 per night (single) or € 45 per night (double). However, you would need to arrange your own transport from the airport to the hotel. A taxi will cost approxi-mately € 40–45.

Guest House Ege University:Fax: + 90 232 339 99 93; reservation phone: +90 232 388 1447 4E-mail: [email protected]

Participants should make their own accommodation arrange-ments. When making your hotel reservation, please copy your e-mails or faxes to the local organiser, or inform her where you will be staying.

Registration

There will be a minimum number of participants required for this workshop to take place, with a maximum number of 20.

ISTA members (includes ISTA laboratory member staff): € 450Non-members: € 575

Payment for the ISTA Vigour Testing Workshop is required in euros before 3 May 2013.

Please note: For cancellations made before 15 April 2013, registration fees are refundable less a € 50 administration fee. For cancellations made after 15 April 2013, registration fees are non-refundable.

If you would like to attend the workshop, please fill in the registration form (www.seedtest.org/vig-test). An invoice will be sent to you, which must be paid before participation can be confirmed. Payment can be made by credit card upon individual request to the ISTA Secretariat.

Registration deadline

3 May 2013

ISTA Workshop on Purity and Germination Ankara, Turkey, 6–9 June 2013

The Variety Registration and Certification Center (VRCC) and Laboratories Ankara in Turkey is looking forward to

hosting the Purity and Germination Workshop.

Location

VRCC Meeting Hall and Laboratories, Ankara, Turkey

Local organizer

Kamil Yilmaz, ISTA Executive Committee Member

Main lecturers

Jane Taylor (Vice-Chair of ISTA Purity Committee)Sylvie Ducournau (Chair of ISTA Germination Committee)

Aim of the workshop

The aim of this workshop is to present theoretical aspects of pu-rity and germination testing, results, calculations and reporting; quality assurance and the practical application of ISTA rules on different species. (PURITY: purity testing procedures; pure seed definitions; seed identification; other seed determination. GERMINATION: germination testing procedures; seedling evaluation).

Workshop content

The workshop will consist of lectures and practical exercises. It will offer the opportunity for general discussion on purity and germination testing, as well as for specific questions regarding testing procedures. The ISTA Rules and the ISTA Handbooks will be discussed and used during the workshop. Language of the workshop is English.

Preliminary programme

– Introduction to ISTA– The history of purity testing and current pure seed

definitions– Seed identification: e.g. family features and difficult to distin-

guish species– Germination calculations and tolerances– ISTA Universal List– Current and future work of the ISTA Purity and Germina-

tion Committees– Testing procedures for germination– Seedling evaluation– Calculations and tolerances (purity and germination)– Quality assurance aspects (purity and germination)– Workshop dinner



ISTA Workshop announcements

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– Cereals: Triticum spp., Hordeum vulgare– Forage crops: Medicago sativa, Vicia sativa, Trifolium repens– Sugar beet: Beta vulgaris– Coated seeds: Beta vulgaris, Medicago sativa, Brassica napus– Mixtures of seeds (seed identification and separation): Lo-

lium spp., Festuca spp., Poa spp.

General information

Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country’s second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of 938 metres (3,077 ft). Centrally located in Anatolia, Ankara is an important commercial and industrial city. It is the centre of the Turkish Government, and houses all foreign embassies. It is an impor-tant crossroads of trade, strategically located at the centre of Turkey’s highway and railway networks, and serves as the mar-keting centre for the surrounding agricultural area. The city was famous for its long-haired Angora goat and its prized wool (mo-hair), a unique breed of cat (Angora cat), Angora rabbits and their prized wool (Angora wool), pears, honey, and the region’s muscat grapes.

Travel information

The International Esenboga Airport is 30 km north of the city center. Transportation is provided by HAVAS shuttle buses, as well as taxis. There are flights to all the other cities in Turkey, with many each day to Istanbul.

Hotel information

The seed lab is near Ankara city centre. There are several hotels with easy walking access to the shopping areas and restaurants of Ankara.

Special rates have been negotiated with the Gür Kent Hotel (4-star; € 45 incl. VAT per night) and the Dedeman Hotel (5-star; € 75 incl. VAT per night) for the duration of the workshop. Pick-up and drop-off on the days of the workshop have also been organized for these hotels.

Participants will be collected from these two hotels at 08:00 free of charge.

If participants would like to stay elsewhere they will be re-sponsible for getting to and from the Ankara Variety Registra-tion and Certification Center (VRCC) themselves. Check-in is at the VRCC Meeting Hall and VRCC Laboratories.

Please note: Hotel fee to be paid locally by participant.Please use booking reference “ISTA Workshop” to get the spe-

cial rate. Hotel reservations will need to be made by partici-pants with their own credit cards directly with the hotels.

Gür Kent Hotel (4-star; € 45 incl. VAT per night, bed and breakfast)Mithatpaşa Cad. No: 4, 06410 Yenişehir-AnkaraTel: 0 (312) 435 50 50 (pbx 24 hat)Fax: 0 (312) 434 46 57E-mail: [email protected], rezervasyon@gurkenthotel.

com

Dedeman Hotel (5-star; € 75 incl. VAT per night bed and breakfast)Akay Cad. Büklüm Sok. 1 06660 AnkaraTel: +90 (312) 416 8800Fax: +90 (312) 417 6214E-mail: [email protected]

Official workshop dinner

The official course dinner will be on one of the workshop days. The dinner will be free of charge.

Registration fees

ISTA Members (includes ISTA laboratory member staff): € 280Non-members: € 380Payment is required before 3 May 2013.Please note: For cancellations made before 15 April 2013, regis-tration fees are refundable minus a € 50 administration fee.For cancellations made after 15 April 2013, registration fees are non-refundable.The number of participants is restricted to a maximum of 20.

If you would like to attend the workshop please fill in the regis-tration form (www.seedtest.org/pur-ger). An invoice will be sent to you, which has to be paid before the participation confirma-tion will be generated. Payment can be made by credit card upon individual request to the ISTA Secretariat.

Registration deadline

3 May 2013




Workshop reports

The Republic of Moldova has been an ISTA member country since 2008, and

since 2010 also has an ISTA-accredited laboratory at the SE “State Centre for Cer-tification of Seed Material”.

In March 2012, the General Inspectorate for Phytosanitary Surveillance and Seed Control as the designated authority for certification of seed material organized an ISTA workshop on seed sampling.

There were 30 participants from 18 countries at the workshop, which consisted of lectures (general principles of seed sam-pling, the ISTA Handbook on Seed Sam-pling, dividing the samples into submitted samples, training aspects for samplers,

audit elements for licensed samplers) and practical exercises (sampling of cereals and other species in bags, big bags and boxes).

The lecturers were Mr. Gerry Hall from Science and Advice for Scottish Agricul-ture (SASA) and Mr. Eddie Goldschagg from the South African National Seed Or-ganization. The Chair of the ISTA Bulk-ing and Sampling Committee (BSC), Mrs. Leena Pietilä from the Finnish Food Safety Authority Evira, was also present.

The lectures were given at the Chateau Vartely, a modern tourist complex with high European standards, professional ser-vice and special programmes.

The practical exercises took place at AMG-Agroselect (a sunflower seed pro-duction company with seed factory) at So-roca. During the practicals the participants carried out seed sampling from various types of containers, and learned how to divide composite samples into submitted samples. There were lively discussions and

valuable contributions from the partici-pants during both lectures and practicals.

The social programme consisted of visits to the monastery of Curchi, the fortress of Soroca, a historic fort in the north of Mol-dova, and the archeological complex Old Orhei, which is situated in the valley of a tributary of the Dniestr–Raut River. It is

ISTA Workshop on Seed Sampling Chisinau, Moldova, 20–23 March 2012

Andrei Mihalachi Deputy Head of Department of Seed Control

General Inspectorate for Phytosanitary Surveil-lance and Seed ControlMD-2004 ChisinauRepublic of [email protected]



Workshop reports

From 6–9 June, Naktuinbouw was host to two ISTA workshops, one on vari-

ety testing and one on flower seed testing. Both workshops were held at the Naktu-inbouw facility in Roelofarendsveen in the Netherlands. A total of 61 participants came from all over the world (North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Aus-tralia and New Zealand) to visit these two four-day workshops.

The participants represented universi-ties, governmental laboratories, govern-mental agencies, commercial seed compa-nies and private laboratories.

Before their respective workshops, all participants were given an introduction to the three main departments of Naktu-inbouw and their work (Inspections, Vari-ety Testing and Laboratories) and a tour through the greenhouses and laboratories.

Workshop on Variety Testing

The programme of the Variety Testing workshop was quite full. It tried to give the participants a complete overview of the whole procedure from sampling, DNA extraction, performing fingerprints, analy-sis of fingerprints to storage of the finger-prints in a database, allowing advanced

comparative analysis with a lot of statistics behind it.

We started with some general informa-tion on DNA by Daniel Perry, DNA mark-er technologies and genotyping for variety identification by Hedwich Teunissen, fol-lowed by PCR, PCR-based markers and marker system development (e.g. all related subjects such as the design of good prim-ers) by Daniel Perry.

located in a well-defined historical and geo-graphical area, known since ancient times as “Codrii Orheiului” or “Tara Orheiului” (Land of Orhei) – once forming a distinct territorial component of one of the many medieval Romanian countries in the im-mense Carpathian-Danubian region. At Old Orhei, nature and human civilization have blended organically, forming a unified ensemble a thousand years old.

On the last day of the workshop, which took place at the ISTA-accredited seed testing laboratory, Mrs. Leena Pietilä gave a presentation of the present work and ex-periments of the BSC, as well as the com-mittee’s plans for the future, and presented all participants with training certificates.

ISTA Workshops on Variety Testing and Flower Seed Testing Roelofarendsveen, Netherlands, 6–9 June 2012

Anton Grim1 and Hedwich Teunissen2 1Manager, Seed Analysis & Nematology; 2Senior Research Scientist, Variety Identification

Naktuinbouw Laboratoria2371 GD [email protected]@naktuinbouw.nl

Participants of the ISTA Workshops on Variety Testing and Flower Seed Testing



Workshop reports

After this theoretical information, the participants were divided into in three groups to extract DNA from three differ-ent species (wheat, potato and Phalaenop-sis) with three different methods and pro-tocols (quick and dirty, Qiagen commercial kit and CTAB based). The Phalaenopsis/CTAB subgroup designated themselves as ‘Dream Team’ but could they demonstrate their excellent output and dedicated work attitude in the final genetic analysis?

The resulting DNA was checked on gel for quality and quantity and was the basic ingredient for the next practical exercise: fingerprinting using SSR. The generated DNA fragments were then separated on Licor Gel (polyacrylamid). The hard work started when Bruno Pot (lecturer from Ap-plied Maths) introduced the software pack-age BioNumerics to all participants for the analysis of biological data. Naktuinbouw uses this software for daily genetic analysis and the management of databases, and our aim was to introduce this valuable pack-age to the participants working in the same field of interest.

In addition to the whole procedure from plants to DNA fingerprinting and variety identity, both in theory and in practice, there were some more lectures. Berta Kill-ermann gave a nice overview of protein electrophoresis-based identification meth-ods and conventional methods. Keshavulu Kunusoth gave a presentation on the work he does in India on molecular markers for variety identification and purity assess-ment in rice, and Daniel Perry explained in a presentation the work that is going on in the CGC in the field of variety identifica-tion. In the last presentation of this work-shop, Hedwich Teunissen explained more about the work at Naktuinbouw: the use of molecular markers and variety identifica-tion in cases of suspected infringements of PBR, forensic studies on plant pathogens and as support for DUS testing.

Workshop on Flower Seed Testing

The aim of the Flower Seed Testing workshop was to gain knowledge and some experience in flower seed testing. The

theoretical information was followed by practical work. The participants started with the determination of other seeds in two flower mixtures in which Begonia or Lavandula were the main species.

The knowledge gained with this practice was helpful in the lecture and practice of the Pure Seed Definitions of Begonia and Lavandula, which were presented by Zita Ripka. She also gave an overview of the work of the Flower Seed Committee by leading the participants through the Flow-er Seed Handbook.

Sylvie Ducournau presented her lectures on the germination of Pelargonium and Zinnia. The information on methodology, seedling type and abnormalities were very helpful in the following practical work with these species.

Stefanie Krämer held a lecture on tetra-zolium testing in flower seeds, followed by lectures on tetrazolium testing on Viola and Primula. The samples for the practi-cal work were prepared by the participants, and the staining process was done by mem-bers of the Naktuinbouw Laboratory. The samples were well-prepared, and everyone could see whether the cuttings made on the seeds before staining were done well.

Every participant had the opportunity to check their sample on viability. In addi-tion to the two prepared species, Stefanie lectured about the other species (Lavandula and Zinnia).

The work of ISTA and the Flower Seed Committee was presented by Rita Zec-chinelli. Very special was her presentation on “How to complete an ISTA Orange Certificate”.

Tolerance tables, the Germination tol-erance calculator and Table G9 of Miles (1963) were the topics of the lecture on statistical aspects in flower seed testing by Anton Grim.

At work in the R & D laboratory at Naktuinbouw

Excursion to flower seed company



Workshop reports

This was the third year that the CFIA’s Seed Science and Technology Sec-

tion (SSTS) based in Saskatoon hosted an ISTA workshop. SSTS is an ISO17025- and ISTA-accredited laboratory working on behalf of the Government of Canada to train, test and monitor the quality of seed and seed analysts in Canada. Janine Maruschak (Section Head, Seed Science & Technology Section) and Steve Jones (Chief of Germination and Purity) opened this year’s workshop, which was about germination.

The 21 participants from Canada, France, Special Customs Territory of Tai-wan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu and the USA enjoyed practical sessions and discus-sions over the three-day workshop on the ISTA Seedling Evaluation Handbook, QA,

accreditation, calculations, tolerance ta-bles, proficiency testing and the ISTA Rules process. The practical sessions included ex-amples of different germination media: on top of paper, in rolled towels, in sand, soil plus crepe paper and organic growing me-dia. Examples came from a range of spe-cies: alfalfa (Medicago sativa), canary grass (Phalaris canariensis), canola (Brassica

juncea), flax (Linum usitatissimum), maize (Zea mays), lentils (Lens culinaris), lettuce (Lactuca sativa), soybean (Glycine max), sunflower (Helianthus annuus), tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) and wheat (Triticum aestivum). The assessment of normal and abnormal seedlings created good discus-sion, especially on the use of root-to-shoot ratios for the species where Lolium is the

Social programme

The participants of both workshops were invited to visit several excursions. On Friday, 8 June, the programme started with a visit to Flora Holland in Aalsmeer. An impressive overview was given on the world biggest flower auction. The process of selling flowers and distributing them to the buyers was impressive and most of all very colourful.

The Friday afternoon excursions were to the Enkhuizen region for a visit to Kieft/PanAM, a flower seed company, or Enza Zaden, a vegetable seed company. The day ended with an spectacular boat tour on the lakes and small canals of Aalsmeer. The many small islands of which most are used for the production of lilacs (Syringa vul-garis) were a delight to see.

Practice of variety testing

ISTA Workshop on Germination Testing Saskatoon, Canada, 17–19 September 2012

Steve Jones Member, ISTA Executive Committee; Chair, ISTA Rules Committee

Canadian Food Inspection AgencySaskatoon LaboratorySaskatoon, Sask. S7N [email protected]



Workshop reports

From September 26 through 28, 2012, the ISTA Statistics Committee held its

9th Seminar on Statistics for Seed Testing at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Ottawa Plant Laboratory. Held only every three years, this seminar aims to provide

a forum where seed testing professionals can increase their level of understanding of statistical methods and analysis associ-ated with seed testing, and gain confidence in using statistical tools developed by the ISTA Statistics Committee. Also, it gives participants and presenters the opportu-nity for open discussions on best statistics practices in their laboratories.

There were 22 participants from Can-ada, the US, Sweden, France and the Netherlands, representing seed companies, government, private laboratories, industry, and other seed organizations. Seminar top-ics were presented by Jean-Louis Laffont

(DuPont Pioneer, France, Chair, ISTA Sta-tistics Committee), Kirk Remund (Mon-santo Company, US, Vice-Chair, ISTA Statistics Committee), Bonnie Hong (Du-Pont Pioneer, US), Tim Perez (Monsanto Company, US), Gabriel Carré (Syngenta Seeds SAS, France), Zivan Karaman (Li-magrain, France), and Professor Sabry Elias (Oregon State University Seed Lab, US, Chair, AOSA Statistics Committee). Cheryl Dollard (Canadian Food Inspec-tion Agency, Canada, Chair, ISTA GMO Technical Committee) coordinated local arrangements with kind support from the host organization and staff.

example species for the seedling group, and whether this approach should be expanded to other seedling groups. Discussions so far would suggest not, as for many species there are so many different factors that can affect the root-to-shoot ratio, such as light, temperature or time of assessment.

The current and future work of the ISTA Germination Committee was highlighted by Sylvie Ducournau, the lead lecturer and current Chair. Sylvie’s co-lecturer was Sarah Dammen from the ISTA-accredited SGS laboratory in the USA.

The mainly North American partici-pants also took the opportunity to discuss differences between the ISTA and AOSA germination evaluations and provided ideas for future work on harmonisation for the ISTA Germination Committee to con-sider in its work planning for 2013–2016.

The participants enjoyed the dry and generally good autumn weather, especially for the official dinner on the river boat on the South Saskatchewan River that loops through Saskatoon. Marc Sabourin (Sas-katoon Laboratory Director) joined us on the riverboat. Thankfully, the predicted overnight temperature did not reach –5 °C but a couple of mornings were cool! The official dinner on the first day of the work-shop allowed people to get to know each other, and also see most of Saskatoon’s bridges and an active beaver lodge.

During the workshop there was also the chance to tour the SSTS laboratory, which included a tour of the CFIA’s National Seed Herbarium (NSH). The guided tour given by Ruojing Wang, the Head of the NSH, gave participants an insight into the unique seed reference collection based in Saskatoon, and talked about seed imag-ing and the use of LUCID keys in seed identification.

This year’s Saskatoon berry crop was not as good as normal, so during the breaks the home baking tradition could only in-clude blueberry tarts, scones and jam rolls this year! However, this time there was the added treat of recipe cards, so that the participants could make their own ‘treats’ when they got home.

The workshops would not have been pos-sible without the dedication and expertise of the whole team at SSTS, who were there to help prepare samples, complete the day-to-day work and make sure that the work-shops were interesting and enjoyable. Once again, both participants and hosts enjoyed their time together sharing, learning and exchanging ideas. As hosts we have gained a lot from the workshops, and would like to thank all the participants, lecturers and SSTS staff, as well as the ISTA Secretariat, who have helped to make these workshops a success. This year, special thanks are due to GEVES, France and SGS, USA, for al-lowing Sylvie and Sarah the time to lecture at the workshops.�

9th ISTA Seminar on Statistics for Seed Testing Ottawa, Canada, 26–28 September 2012

Cheryl Dollard1, Kirk Remund2 and Jean-Louis Laffont3

1Chair, ISTA GMO Committee; 2Vice-Chair, ISTA Statistics Committee, 3Chair, ISTA Statistics Committee

1Ottawa Plant Laboratory FallowfieldCanadian Food Inspection Agency3851 Fallowfield RoadOttawa, Ont. K2H [email protected]



Workshop reports

When you participate in any meeting of the International Seed Testing

Organization (ISTA) for the first time, the first thing you hear is “welcome to the ISTA family”. And from then on you enjoy the

permanent support, mutual understanding and help of the Secretariat of the Associa-tion and ISTA laboratory members.

This has led to the development of ben-eficial relations and the exchange of profes-sional experience between the ISTA labo-ratory members of the Russian Federation and the National Seeds Testing Laboratory of the Republic of Latvia (part of the Seed Testing Department of the Ministry of Agriculture) with regard to the training of specialists for ISTA accreditation.

In 2011, eight Russian seed analysts, from five federal state-funded institutions

Qualification courses of Russian seed testing specialists Riga, Latvia, 27 February–2 March 2012

Elena Tkachenko1 and Irina Kozyreva2 1ISTA Personal Member; 2Head of Biological Research Department

Testing Laboratory for Product Safety and Quality EvaluationFederal Centre of Quality and Safety Assurance for Grain and Grain Products140100 RamenskoeRussian [email protected]

The first day of the workshop was opened by Jean-Louis Laffont and Cheryl Dollard who welcomed everyone and set the stage for the next three days. Linda De-Verno, Director of the Ottawa Plant Labo-ratory wished the group good discussions and encouraged all to find time to enjoy the beautiful attractions found in Ottawa. Lecturers and participants then had the opportunity to introduce themselves, and the Seminar was officially opened.

Over a three-day period, the program covered a range of important topics in statistics for seed testing, including equiv-alence testing, an overview of the Euro-pean Food Safety Authority approach for safety evaluation of GMOs, measurement uncertainty, tolerance tables, acceptance sampling, generalized linear models, ger-mination calculators and an overview of SeedCalc, R and R-Excel. Participants were encouraged to ask questions through-out, which led to excellent discussions and exchanges. The presentations not only pro-vided background and technical instruc-tion on statistical methods of data analysis, but also conveyed the importance of using such methods to ensure proper analysis of test data, and also to interpret what the re-sults actually mean.

The program content was high level and the days were jam packed, yet the atmos-phere was relaxed and fun. Transportation

to and from the lab each day in a big yellow school bus was entertaining and gave par-ticipants and lecturers alike the opportu-nity to get to know each other better. Day 3 brought ‘friendly competition’ among the group to win fresh baked sugar cookies by correctly answering questions posed by the lecturers. The beautiful fall weather was perfect for an excursion into the city cen-tre, where participants could visit the his-toric By Ward Market – one of Canada’s oldest public markets. There was time to stroll and explore boutiques, pubs, galler-ies and cafés before taking a guided tour of the Centre Block on Parliament Hill – an example of Victorian gothic architecture and the centre of the Canadian Govern-ment. The tour included a visit to the Li-brary of Parliament – a working collection housed in a stunningly beautiful room sur-rounded by white pine panelling engraved with flowers, masks and small figures. The group also had the chance to observe the Members of Parliament debate the future of the country from the Public Gallery of the House of Commons. Following the visit to the market, a delightful dinner for the group was held at The Black Tomato, sponsored by DuPont Pioneer.

The OLF presentation auditorium lent a sense of formality to the proceedings, but the genial nature of the lecturers and par-ticipants created an informal atmosphere

where all openly shared their experiences and particular statistical problems and questions. Although the subject matter was advanced and the presentations so-phisticated, the overall atmosphere was relaxed, and there were many discussions among the participants and lecturers. The three days ended with great success, with expressions of thanks from everyone, and the presentation of official certificates to all the participants and instructors.

Many thanks to all who were involved in delivery of ISTA’s 9th Statistics Seminar: CFIA’s Ottawa Laboratory Fallowfield senior management – Dr. Karen Jesset and Linda DeVerno – for graciously of-fering the host facility; to Cheryl Dollard and members of the OLF staff – especial-ly Marie-Eve Auclair, Lysane Maynard, Beata Fiturski, Alexandre Blain, Marie-Rose Mukagasana, Marie-Jose Côté, and Eliane Guillemette, for local coordination and daily “behind the scenes” activities; to DuPont Pioneer for generous financial support for dinner at The Black Tomato; to the lecturers for sharing their time and expertise; and in particular, to the partici-pants for such enthusiasm. Finally, thanks to Martina Haefeli, Agnes Hegedüs, and many others at the ISTA Secretariat for or-ganization and facilitation.�



Workshop reports

under the jurisdiction of the Federal Ser-vice for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, visited the hospitable city of Riga. In February 2012, a further 15 spe-cialists from Russia had an opportunity to increase their professional level.

As usual, responsibility for arranging and preparing the courses on behalf of the Russian Federation was in the hands of specialists from the Testing Laboratory for Product Safety and Quality Evalua-tion of the FSFI (Federal Centre of Qual-ity and Safety Assurance for Grain and Grain Products) of the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor). On the Latvian side,

a great deal of work was done by the Seed Testing Department of the Republic of Latvia and specialists of the National Seed Testing Laboratory.

At the beginning of the training course, the Russian seed analysts were welcomed by the head of the State Plant Protection Service of the Republic of Latvia, Kristine Kjago. They then had an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the work of the Seed Testing Department of the Latvian Ministry of Agriculture and the National Seed Testing Laboratory, and the system of seed certification in the Republic of Latvia.

During the course, important questions concerning the work of laboratories in

accordance with the ISTA Accreditation Standard were discussed, such as the elab-oration and implementation of the system of guarantee of work of the laboratory, calibration of laboratory equipment, label-ling of seed lots, usage and storage of seed collections, proficiency testing, changes in the International Rules for 2012, and the issuing of the International Certificates.

There were also lectures and practical work on sampling, purity testing, other seed determination, determination of the thousand-seed weight, moisture determi-nation, germination testing and health of agricultural plants.

Sampling was held under real conditions on the basis of seed complex-cleaning system.

At the end of the course, the Russian specialists received certificates of their par-ticipation in the course.

The Russian party would like to warmly thank the Seed Testing Department of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Latvia, and personally the head of the State Plant Protection Service of the Re-public of Latvia, Kristine Kjago, the head of the Seed Testing Department, Velta Evelone, the Chief of the Latvian National Seed Testing Laboratory, Solvita Berga, and all specialists of the laboratory for the high standard of the arrangement of the courses.


No. 144 October 2012 Seed Testing International III

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ISTA News Bulletin No. 144 October 2012ISSN 1999-5229